Recently, when filing something on EFS-Web, I noticed a Customer number I was not familiar with on my pull-down menu.  To my surprise, it was a customer number taken out by a previous employer after I had left their employ.   As such, I was presumably able to access all applications filed under this customer number, whether published or not, and whether or not they were still clients of mine.  I accessed one record, and found in doing so, that I could remove myself from the improper number.  But, it raised a question in my mind – Who is responsible for management of access to a customer number?  The ‘owner’ of the number, or the practitioner identified under it?

As patent attorneys, we are all wed to our foreign agents.  But sometimes, we need to re-think that relationship, as well as the relationship with our docketing software, and outside service providers.

I was reminded of this recently when I received an email from a foreign associate ‘reminding’ me that a certified copy of a priority document was due 2 days ago at their jurisdictions patent office.

A few weeks ago, I received a check in the mail from the Patent Office for $1,690.  There was no client reference, rather the memo merely stated “refund of overpayment for service”.  I do not pay fees on behalf of my clients, but rather, utilize their deposit accounts to do so, and would have assumed that any refund requested by a client would simply have been debited to the same.  Puzzled, I called the telephone number provided, and for a while, stumped the PTO employee as well.  After a check of her records, she called me back to inform me that the refund was for a “terminated Ex party reexam”. 

In connection with a patent application I was prosecuting for a client that had recently received an after final office action, I was reviewing options with the client.  They decided to go the appeal route, and further to try a pre-appeal brief request for review.  I have filed 5 of these, and prevailed on 3.  In this particular case, the request was found persuasive, and prosecution was reopened.  Unfortunately, the Examiner merely issued a further final office action, with only minor adjustments to the arguments in support of the previously leveled rejections.

Annoyed that the pre-appeal brief success had not resulted in a furtherance of prosecution, and that I had ended up back in the same place in 6 months, I called the Office of Patent Legal Administration and asked about the ramifications of having to file another Notice of Appeal.  To my surprise, I was told that while I did need to file another Notice of Appeal, I did not need to pay another fee.  Rather, I could request that the previously paid Notice of Appeal fee be reapplied.

A few weeks ago, I took on a pro-bono litigation matter forgetting about the perils of discovery, and in particular, document production. As a solo patent prosecution attorney, I am now able to do most everything online, and so, dealing with a lot of paper is not something I normally do, and so, I am not set up to do it.

Faced with the prospect of hours of slow printing, or copying limited to 50 sheets at a time, I chose what I thought would be the lessor of two evils – spending hours at Kinkos  doing the same thing, but at least using their commercially sized resources.

Much to my surprise, I discovered that you can now print from flash drives at FedEx Kinkos Office locations, for the same price as you can copy.