Public User's Meeting

Public Records Division (PRD)/Public Search Services Division (PSSD)
Quarterly Public User’s Meeting
October 21, 2014

 

The Public User’s Meeting was held at 1:00 p.m. in the Global IP Academy, Madison East, 2nd floor, at 600 Dulany Street on the USPTO campus in Alexandria, Virginia.  Martha Sneed, Director of PSSD, chaired the meeting.  CIO John Owens was present at the meeting to field questions on technology issues.
 

Announcements

CPC Training Classes for Public Users:

The Public Search Facility is working with the Patent Training Academy to offer CPC training to public searchers. Classes will be held in GIPA when they become available.
 

Public Search Facility (PSF) Status

Four new posters have been placed on the walls at the PSF entrance to provide more information about the inventors whose signatures encircle the lobby walls.

PSF user survey for 2015 is coming soon. Anticipated launch is December/January and it will be open for two weeks. It will be available in both electronic and paper versions.

New versions of EAST and WEST are coming.  Beta testing is scheduled for early November.

There will be some new faces at the online desk.  Current staff will be working with the new staff to get them up to speed.  Reference assistance will continue to be available during the hours 8:00am to 5:00pm.

User Comment: Please instruct the new staff to guide new users to the CPC and not just the USPC classification paper volumes.  Suggestion noted.
 

Public Records Division Status

No announcements at this time. Staff is working hard to keep up with the workload and more users are becoming familiar with the new Assignments on the Web (AOTW). Creating a My USPTO account makes uploading funds easier for financial transactions.

Kudos to AOTW from a member of the public was expressed.
 

Q&A with CIO John Owen

Plans for user logins at this time? No status at this time.  We are waiting to buy new switches to upgrade PE2E2 for patent examination corps. Might be January – February time frame; but it is also dependent on training and union approval.  We are also currently working on a replacement for OACS.  Also, the new search engine is web based.  Internal beta testing will take place next year with possible open to public testing in 2016.

The Public User’s meeting wrapped up at 1:20pm. Next meeting date TBA.