Patent Office Professional Association (POPA) Proposes Solutions to Examination Problems

The November 2004 Newsletter of the Patent Office Professional Association (POPA) is available online.  POPA is a union of patent office professionals, such as patent examiners. 

The newsletter discusses the PTO’s Image File Wrapper (IFW) system and outlines many problems and proposes solutions. For example:

Problem: Examiners’ greatest complaints with IFW, by far, relate to the multitude of scanning errors that create documents improperly entered in the file record, amendments and office actions entered days, weeks, or months late, documents filed under the wrong tabs, and more.

POPA Solution: Better training for scanning contractors; immediate e-mail forwarding of scanned documents to the appropriate examiner; scan-on-demand service centers in each technology center.

Other proposed solutions include better indexing of non-patent literature (NPL) and caching of IFW files so that the examiners can work with a file when the PTO’s system is down.  As Greg Aharonian has repeatedly stated, improving the ability of examiners to search prior art will result in a better system for everyone involved.

Interestingly, the POPA Newsletter also discussed upcoming Phillips v. AWH en-banc hearing from the point-of-view of patent examiners. 

Examiners are trained to interpret the claims as broadly as possible unless the applicant has explicitly provided a definition to the contrary in the specification or if the specification provides an explicit disclaimer. Examiners are permitted to use dictionaries and other extrinsic evidence to determine the broadest reasonable interpretation.

My review of the briefs filed Phillips will be published in next Month’s issue of Patent World.

Update:  A regular reader of the Patently-O Blog wrote in on the subject of scanning errors. In his well reasoned view, the PTO should simply have patent attorneys electronically submit PDF documents to the Office.  Then, there would be no scanning errors. 

—–Original Message—–
From: XXXX
S
ent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 10:33 PM
To: Crouch, Dennis
Subject: Patent Office Professional Association (POPA) Proposes Solutions to Examination Problems

Examiners’ greatest complaints with IFW, by far, relate to the multitude of scanning errors that create documents improperly entered in the file record, amendments and office actions entered days, weeks, or months late, documents filed under the wrong tabs, and more

Scanning errors? I think they are missing the big picture. When I file anything at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, I simply upload a pdf (rendering scanning errors impossible-but I guess there are still some font issues). Regardless, uploading pdf documents is so fast, so checkable (did that just work?), so simple, soooo why doesn’t the patent office get it?

As I sit here and wait for my USPTO fax back at 10:31 PM.