As of right now, the USPTO is set to kill EFS and PAIR at 23:59 on November 14 so that we'll be left with only the defective "Patent Center" to file and check our patent documents at the USPTO. Of course, that was supposed to happen last week, but the USPTO blinked at the last minute. Maybe it will do so again. It certainly hasn't consulted with users to make sure that PC does what it's supposed to do. And it keeps doing more and more asinine things on its way to forcing PC down users' throats.
For example, starting about two weeks ago, PC started gagging on files being submitted, saying that there's a problem with the naming of the file. Did it tell anyone the exact problem? No, of course, not, because we all have time to guess. Turns out - after much guessing - that whereas hitherto the USPTO systems accepted pdf files in a case-insensitive manner, viz. you could file a pdf document named filename.PDF or filename.pdf, some brilliant IT developer made it so that you can only file with the .pdf part of the name in lowercase letters.
What kind of a cockamamie system does that?!
And to justify this change, the PTO pointed to a hitherto never-enforced "rule", that says that filetype extension have to be in lowercase. Seriously? Are you really such a-holes? The statute said that continuations have to be filed before the parent case issues, but the PTO's practice for years was to allow continuations to be filed on the day the parent case issues, and when the matter came before the Federal Circuit several years ago, it said, "Yeah, we know what the statute says, but we're not going to upset long-held practice." Filing with documents labeled .PDF, in all caps, never bothered you before. Why'd you go out of your way to be jerks? Or was this a screw-up, because you didn't ask people what they do, and now you have to cover your rear ends by pointing to never-enforced, illogical provision of some rule?
This isn't trivial: apparently there's law office management software used by lots of firms that generates documents as filename.PDF.
Maybe part of the issue is something noticed by Pam Brisky, an IP paralegal working at a large company. She found the following announcement from April 2022 (red added by me):
"Steampunk Awarded $2B BOSS Prime Contract at USPTO
"MCLEAN, Va., April 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Steampunk, Inc. is excited to announce that it has been awarded a United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Business Oriented Software Solutions (BOSS) contract. The objective of the BOSS contract is to procure services and expertise, primarily in the form of Agile Teams, that drive effectiveness and deliver on a key USPTO metric of "delivering business value to our customers, frequently, predictably, and with high quality". The BOSS contract will support the USPTO's priority to implement its Agile New Ways of Working (NWOW) to enable an IT stabilization and modernization journey with customer business value at the heart of its decisions and actions. Steampunk is one of five total awardees, and one of three small business awardees, of the Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with a 10-year Period of Performance (POP) and $2 Billion cumulative ceiling.
"Matt Warren, Steampunk CEO said, "Steampunk is humbled and honored for the opportunity to bring new thinking and innovation to the USPTO BOSS program through our Design Intelligence® Framework to drive business value and reduce operational risk to the organization. We look forward to working with the USPTO teams to advance their capabilities and provide efficiencies within the USPTO product lines that support and protect innovators who play an enormous role in the US economy."
"Steampunk began supporting the USPTO last year as an Intelligent Automation and Innovation Support Services (IAISS) Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) awardee. Jay Danielski, the Steampunk Director of Operations for contracts with USPTO said, "We are incredibly excited to continue to support the USPTO IT Modernization journey, building on the DevSecOps and Agile support we currently provide to USPTO. The BOSS award and task order opportunities provide us yet another opportunity to continue to enact positive change and business value."
"Steampunk is a Change Agent in the Federal contracting industry, bringing new thinking to clients in the Homeland, Federal Civilian, Health, and DoD sectors. Through our Human-Centered delivery framework, we are fundamentally changing the expectations our federal clients have for true shared accountability in solving their toughest mission challenges. As an employee-owned company, we focus on investing in our employees to enable them to do the greatest work of their careers – and rewarding them for outstanding contributions to our growth. If you want to learn more about our story, visit http://www.steampunk.com."
Sounds like Kamala Harris speaking. If anyone understands what those highlighted strings of words mean, please let me know. Must be nice to get $200 million per year for having an "Indefinite Delivery" contract of "Indefinite Quality". It certainly doesn't seem to require producing anything useful.
Hey, Kathi Vidal: how about if your office just does what it's supposed to do, which is to examine patent applications?