[Patentpractice] Assignment Center Upgrade

[Randall Svihla]

Obviously this is sub-optimal.


From: Patentpractice <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> On Behalf Of Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2025 4:32 AM
To: For patent practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice. <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
Subject: Re: [Patentpractice] Assignment Center Upgrade

On 10/21/2025 6:40 PM, Scott Nielson via Patentpractice wrote:
Do you have any feedback on the new assignment center? I haven't explored it thoroughly yet, but it seems that searching for assignments, which previously had issues, is working now.

It's clear that the USPTO did no regression testing or meaningful beta testing of the new Assignment Center.

To give one example, just now I selected at random one of our pending cases that is the national phase of a PCT application.

In the old assignment search system, which has now been shut down, I could plug in my choice of either the PCT number or the US-series application number.  Either of the two searches yielded the reel and frame number.

But in the new Assignment Center, the search using the PCT number wrongly comes back empty.  In contrast, the US-series application number yields the reel and frame number.

It's worse than that, I just realized.  The Abstract of Title that Assignment Center gave me for the US-series application number has a field for the PCT number.  And this field in the Abstract of Title says "N/A" when of course it should list the PCT number.

If the developers got these two things wrong (and they did), then I cringe to think how many other things they may have gotten wrong.

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