Re: [PIUG List] OG Notices re: status of technology centers

Pogson, Phoebe wrote on 1/17/2008 11:56 AM:
>
> In the past, the OG has provided a notice each week of the average
> date of new applications being taken up for examination in each
> technology center. This is something my practice group has relied
> upon to determine whether we should follow up with the PTO on the
> status of an application, the assumption being that if the TC is
> currently examining cases filed in 2004 and my app was filed in 2006,
> there is no point in spending time tracking down the status. When I
> went into the most recent OG notices (1/15/2008) I was extremely
> surprised to see that this is information is no longer being provided,
> although the final 2007 OG contained the listing.
>
> I dont' recall seeing notification that this was being removed from
> the OG, wondering if anyone has further information.
>
You're right. I had not noticed it until you mentioned it. But now I
see it, thank you. USPTO has quietly discontinued posting the backlog
information in the OG.

Well, I guess that is one way of reducing the public visibility of the
size of the backlog of unexamined cases.

Keep in mind that Private PAIR will give you something called a "first
action prediction". So you can view the FAP, and docket that date, and
then there's no need to track down the status.

When I say "there's no need to track down the status" of course I am not
really correct. The MPEP has, for decades, stated that it is the
customer's duty to make a status check every six months to the USPTO on
every case where nothing has been heard from USPTO within the past six
months. The point of that section of the MPEP is, of course, to shift
blame to the customer (rather than to USPTO or the Postal Service) if a
case goes abandoned due to some slipup such as an Office Action being
mailed and then lost in the mail. So really you need to docket every
six months to check for things like Office Actions lost in the mail.
This is so regardless of what the old OG backlog information might tell you.

There is also the OCN (outgoing correspondence notification) feature of
Private PAIR. You can use OCN to let you know if something has been
mailed to you, and then you can docket to make sure that whatever it is,
it actually arrives in the mail (or gets downloaded from IFW).

Prior to January 1, 2008 it was possible to use Partridge to check for
events that might mean you need to do a status check. There are all
manner of mistakes and slipups within USPTO that Partridge would catch
and you would know to jump on it to get whatever it is fixed right
away. But USPTO shut down USPTO Direct and provided no documented
successor interface, so that's no longer a way to check for such things.


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Received on Mon Jan 21 2008 - 01:45:38