[Patentpractice] astonishing slowness from "helpaia"

[Patent Lawyer]

Carl,

Your story reminded me of one of my practice tips (to myself).

You said you filed a response the same day you received the notice (Form M327).

In my experience, it is those same-day responses that get lost at the PTO.  They don’t seem to be able to match an incoming applicant paper as a response to an outgoing PTO paper of the same date.  It does not matter what I titled the paper (I think there’s a required title).  This problem predates Patent Center.

I have had this problem with missing parts notices (especially if they want more than fees), and these after-issue-fee or after-allowance drawing problems.  Even if they take the fees (which they always do), the do not match the papers.

So, as pissed off as I get from these after-issue-fee drawing notices (especially in US national phase applications), and as easy and therapeutic as it might be to respond, if I remember, I wait at least one day before filing a response.


From: Patentpractice <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> on behalf of Patentpractice Patentpractice <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
Reply-To: Patentpractice Patentpractice <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
Date: Thursday, October 9, 2025 at 12:02 PM
To: Patentpractice Patentpractice <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
Subject: [Patentpractice] astonishing slowness from "helpaia"


Wow.  You can send an email to helpaia at uspto.gov<mailto:helpaia at uspto.gov> and if you do, it won't get ignored.  It will actually get answered.  But it will take five months to get the answer.  Here is how it went.

We paid the Issue Fee in one of our cases on March 3, 2025, and as so often happens these days, it was after I paid the Issue Fee that somebody in the Issue Branch got all wound up about how supposedly our drawings were defective.  A Form M327 arrived on March 7, 2025, telling me that two of my figures were defective.

Never mind that the Application Branch people whose job it is to pipe up if something is wrong with the drawings did not find anything wrong with the drawings back when they were deciding whether or not to mail out a Filing Receipt (back in August of 2022).

Never mind that the USPTO people who do 18-month publication did not find anything defective about the drawings and were able to carry out the 18-month pub.

Never mind that when the Examiner examined the case, the Examiner was able to figure out whether or not the case was patentable without the quality of the drawings getting in the way.

But anyway yes once we had paid the Issue Fee, somebody in the Issue Branch found a real or imagined defect in two or our figures.  And I filed a detailed response (later the same day, on March 7, 2025) explaining why there was nothing wrong with those figures.  (I suspected it was a problem arising out of the fact that the USPTO system mangles drawings when placing them into IFW, because the drawings were perfectly clear in SCORE but were mangled in IFW.)  And many weeks passed with no word back from anybody at the USPTO as to whether our case was going to go abandoned (as threatened) due to the supposedly defective drawings.

This was back in the days when you could pick up the phone and dial the AAU and it would only take an hour or two to reach a human being.

Anyway whatever the problem was, I had phoned up the AAU twice (the second time on April 7, 2025) and the AAU persons had not meaningfully assisted.  And so on April 30, 2025 I sent the email.

(As an aside, I cannot now recall how I stumbled upon helpaia at uspto.gov<mailto:helpaia at uspto.gov> as a place to go to try to get help.)

Anyway, I guess whoever the nameless person was in the Issue Branch who had gotten wound up about this, that person maybe eventually paid attention to my detailed response and decided to release the hold on the to-be-issued case, because the patent did eventually issue on June 18, 2025.

Anyway, here is the astonishing thing.   Today, October 9, 2025 I received a response to the "helpaia" email.  It came from "helpaau at uspto.gov"<mailto:helpaau at uspto.gov> which is not the same email address, but it quoted my April 30 email so it is clear it was in response to my email that I sent to "helpaia".

There are several learning opportunities floating around in this odd sequence of events.

First, apparently helpaia at uspto.gov<mailto:helpaia at uspto.gov> is a real thing and does really reach human beings somehow.  I suppose every practitioner should add this to their bag of tricks in case it might some day be helpful.

Second, we note that it took more than five months for this email to elicit a response.

Have you used helpaia?  Did it work for you?


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