Mr. Trippe Goes to Washington

This is awesome for PIUG. I hope PIUG members will post here with suggestions to help us all take advantage of this opportunity.

Tony: I wonder if you would consider getting invites for a couple other PIUG members to join you for that day. We certainly have members within quick driving distance of Alexandria who could contribute in direct conversation with the USPTO hosts.

While Commission Stoll spoke without presentation slides, Marti Hearst, Chief IT Strategist at the USPTO, provided hers for her presentation at lunch: see them at http://www.piug.org/2010/docs/Hearst_USPTO_Reengineering_Classification_at_the_USPTO.pdf.

In addition, we have the two USPTO workshop presentations from the Annual Conference available to all. See PIUG 2010 Annual Conference Presentations - May 2010 for details.

Tony,

Congratulations on the high profile visit to the USPTO.  If you need anything while you're here, let me know since I'll be around during your visit.  And if you go to the Trademark Bar and Grill for lunch with Marti (popular with the PTO upper echelon to get away from the rabble), I'd avoid the questionable wasabi peanuts.

On a more serious note, here is a list of questions off the top of my head:

Re: In-house search tools (when the PTO finally receives a healthy infusion of cash)...

1) Will they try to upgrade their existing in-house search tools or throw it all out and start from scratch?

2) If they start from scratch (which I consider probable), are they more likely to have a system built to spec or license/purchase one of the many systems from an existing vendor?

3) Will the new system retain the same command line language (BRS) which the 6,000 current examiners know and have been using for 12 years or just switch as happened 12 years ago (with the retirement of the APS system)?

4) Will it ever be on-line?  With limited speed of access or examiner desktop speed of access?

5) When will they bite the bullet and buy the EPO raw data?  (US examiners are 100% unable to search non-US prior art from before 1970.  Nor can they search via ECLA codes.)

6) What about swallowing our American pride and buying or licensing the EPOQUE system?  This would be a big step in the direction forecast by the IP5 Harmony agreements (much easier to work-share when everything is in the same format).

Re: In-house training...

With the plans to hire 1,000 more examiners in 2010-2012 in place, will the Patent Training Academy be re-opened.  From what I have heard, it was not a glowing success at creating ready-to-be-productive examiners even after a 2 year training period.  What changes are planned in the training program with regard to searching?  Will the PTO be looking to tap any outside expertise (PIUG members) in this training program or continue to do it all in-house?

Re: USPTO Data...

1) When is the PTO going to throw away the horrible patent search engine on their website.  It is embarrassing.

2) When will Public PAIR finally have text readable PDFs?  Applicants send in text readable electronic documents, why does this feature get removed?  (This is one of Dennis Crouch's favorite topics since it makes much of his research quite difficult!)

3) When will the PTO start releasing amended claim data as searchable information?  The need to access Public PAIR for every single PG-PUB of interest is a huge drain on time and resources (and PTO bandwidth).  The public should be able to easily access the current status of an application (whether abandoned, allowed as is, amended and still rejected, or amended and in a state of allowance), without having to jump through hoops. 

(In an ideal world, the PTO website could have the current claims represented in their HTML file for each application while the TIFF/PDF file could remain static until allowance or abandonment.  At some point after abandonment, the HTML and/or TIFF/PDF file should then show the claims as abandoned!)

4) Will the PTO continue to partner with Google for the hosting and dissemination of their data?  If so, will they allow Google to convert the current electronic file wrappers into text searchable documents?  What about scanning in the old file wrappers sitting in the warehouses in Springfield?  What about the old foreign art (pre-1994) that was organized by US classification and housed in the paper shoes but is now warehoused?  Will the PTO ever upload the OCR scanning of the pre-1976 art that Google has already performed into their own systems (it's pretty good, btw).

Re: PIUG responses to PTO requests for comments...

We are a very diverse group and our individual/company interests are all over the map.  It would be a rare issue that we could have a unified answer to, in my opinion.

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Enough from me!  Sorry for the long winded reply.

Again, congrats on the invitation to visit the PTO and on this opportunity to build PIUG's reach.  Please feel free to utilize me as a local resource while you are visiting.

Dominic
www.demarcoip.com

Toni,

I would like to know why US information consumers are denied access to a robust system?

Making information available for inventors and encouraging innovation is mandated by law. Yet, most people searching the USPTO public data have to be contented to work with an archaic search engine and output format that is not robust.

Having said that, I would like to know how we might influence both the format output and features of the available public online search and retrieval tools (those tools that are provided to inventors, innovators, and information consumers)?

How far along is the USPTO in adding/adopting an add-on IR analytical toolkit that will enable finer visualization of the retrieved patent set.

When does the USPTO plan on making these tools available to information consumers. Espacenet (EPO) has made significant progress in this area and is to be commended.

Sherri Voebel

Tony,

Congratulations!  I think it is wonderful that Mr. Stoll has inivited you and that you are also able to go to the USPTO to represent PIUG and take our concerns to the top.  Excellent way to foster a better relationship between PIUG and the USPTO, and PIUG could not have a better representative. 

I share many of the concerns above expressed by Dominic and Sherri, especially wanting to know when the USPTO website and search engine will be upgraded and how. The difference between searching the USPTO site and Espacenet is remarkable.  Clearly the USPTO is way behind with their website and search engine and much improvement is needed.

By the way, love the title of your post.  Have a great visit next week and I can't wait to hear about the meetings.

Suzanne

Thank you everyone for the responses, questions and general enthusiasm over this development.  We clearly have an opportunity to make our voices heard and we should certainly take advantage of it.

It is also very clear that the USPTO IT systems and Google are very important and I will make sure these areas are covered.  I also received two comments off-line that were very similar to these and referring to Google and Esp@cenet.

I also wanted to address Tom's suggestion and mention that this will not be the last visit we will be making to the USPTO and one of the items I would like to put on the agenda for this visit is timing for the next meeting where we could invite some PIUG people to visit the office and continue the dialog with the people there.  I hope Dominic will be able to join a meeting like that for instance since he is local, highly invested and knowledgable in this area and excited about the opportunity.

If anyone else is interested in attending a follow-up visit please respond to this post or contact me or another member of the Board privately.

Tony,

I glad that you as a PIUG Chair is invited to USPTO for a visit and PIUG might have an opportunity to be more involved in USPTO changes.

Yesterday, without knowledge about your visit to USPTO, I sent you slightly critical e-mail regarding the main theme of the future PIUG Conference, considering it too narrow. In view of possible cooperation with USPTO, and potential government funding, it is now more understandable dedication of the conference to a deep discussion of current state and prospects of commercial patent searching.

 I want to remind that 50-60 years ago USPTO was one of few organizations who was involved in active development of automatic patent retrieval systems. I hope that now, as Dominique mentioned, is a window of opportunity for professional patent searches, those who are outside the office, to be benefited from the search technology development which USPTO plan to entertain. This could be insensitive for us to share our search expertise with Marti Hearst team.

You may mention to Commissioner and/or Dr. Hearst about existing gap in time for a search available inside and outside the office  (I do not count champions Dominique and his colleagues searching mechanical art in the USPTO Public Search Facility). One who expect that examiners and my former colleagues in USPTO's STIC would be able to perform comprehensive patentability searches just in a few hours, could also expect a breakthrough in the search technology.

Finally, being exciting in opportunities arising from future cooperation with USPTO, we should not overlook threats. Many of searchers who involved in patentability searches are having jobs because USPTO is not doing reliable patent searches during patent examination. While situation with USPTO in-house searching would be improving, supposedly with PIUG help, some of us may find themselves in more competitive situation then it exists today.

 Good luck with you visit.

 Alex

PS  Take Ginger with you to a lunch with Marti, if she is not invited.

Tony

This is great news and hopefully a portent of good things to come. I'll look forward to seeing your update on Monday's meetings.

I have three top of my head notes.

1. Create a registered user log-in system for Public PAIR. The current log-in is supposed to be in place to keep people or groups from scraping the website and hogging bandwidth. I would like to be able to log-in as a registered user and not get kicked out of the system after 15 minutes. If I am a registered user the USPTO can track my usage levels and if I am a bandwidth hog they can cut me off. As a adjunct, I would only want the USPTO to track my usage levels and that they would not collect or immediately purge what I was looking at. Paranoia - can't live with it and you can't live without it.

2. I would also like to have a feature on Public PAIR that would alert you to status changes. I don't mean grants or lapses due to fees being missed. The kind of status change I want is to know when a non-final rejection has been mailed out. This would help us with high priority applications, tricky apps that require more lead time for responses because of complexity or difficulty in getting together with the engineers or to get the app on the agenda of our company's IP committee meetings to discuss continuing on or perhaps dropping the app.

3. Reduce the number of apps published without assignee names. I know there are a number of ways to get around this by searching on inventors, in-house counsel, etc. However, if you are running a search on a commercial vendor and sort your results (say 500 hits) by assignee it is frustrating to have 200 of them be unassigned. I also know the commercial vendors have ways of compensating for this, but I would like to see those approaches be used on top of an already cleaner data set.

Again, this is terrific news and the welcome result of a lot of work over the years by PIUG in building relationships at the USPTO that have made it possible for Mr. Trippe to Go to Washington. Besides, who doesn't like a well placed Jimmy Stewart reference.

Jim

I am so glad to see that this meeting and the corresponding blog post have generated so many responses and suggestions from the membership.  I have compiled all of the questions here and in private correspondence into a set of discussion topics for my meeting tomorrow.

I would also like to mention that I agree completely with Jim (and indirectly Alex) that it took a lot of work on the part of many PIUG members to get us to the point we are now with the USPTO.  Ginger DeMille in particular has worked tirelessly to help bridge the gap between our organizations and deserves a lot of credit for getting us to the stage we are at now.

Tony,

It's been awhile since your visit, do you have anything interesting to share from it (hint, hint)...

And since then, the PTO has posted an interesting tidbit at: http://www.uspto.gov/patents/pettp.jsp

"The USPTO is seeking public assistance in providing technical training to patent examiners within all technology centers.  The Patent Examiner Technical Training Program (PETTP) is intended to provide scientists and experts as lecturers to patent examiners in order to update them on technical developments, the state of the art, emerging trends, maturing technologies, and recent innovations in their fields. Such guest lecturers must have relevant technical knowledge, as well as familiarity with prior art and industry practices/standards in areas of technologies where such lectures would be beneficial."

Is this something PIUG could potentially participate in as a group of international experts on patent information, or something best left to individuals so inclined?

Dominic
www.demarcoip.com