The Public Users Meeting was held at 2:00 p.m. in the 1st floor conference
room 1D04/D14, Randolph Building on the USPTO campus at Carlyle in Alexandria,
Virginia. Ted Parr, OPR Director, chaired the meeting. There were approximately
10 members of the public in attendance and 10 USPTO staff.
Announcements
The May meeting will be held in the Alexandria Room in South Tower. Notices
will be sent out prior to the scheduled meeting.
Public Search Facility Update
UPWS Beta Testing
Julie Fraser reported on the results of the beta testing for UPWS. Beta testing
will end on 4/27/05. So far the testing has gone well. Testing has revealed
links that were not working, which have been fixed, and firewall issues that
will be fixed prior to deployment. An issue of duplicate search results has
been passed along to the BRS team so the appropriate fixes can be done. Red
book ICE needs additional testing so it has been taken off the schedule and
will be retested in May for rollout in June.
Data Center Relocation Impacts
The Data Center is moving to the Alexandria campus beginning the end of April.
The move will be accomplished over successive weekends throughout May. June
will be skipped and the move will continue throughout the month of July, still
being accomplished during weekends. Each Friday during the moves the Data
Center will close at 6:00 p.m. and reopen for normal business hours on Monday.
Since on any given Friday different UPWS applications will be affected, as
well as the fee collection systems, the USPTO is proposing to close the Public
Search Facility at 6 p.m. on Fridays throughout the move period. The South
Tower facility will not be impacted since it closes at 5 p.m. While the Data
Center move has been planned so as to avoid disruption of service, if problems
should come up it is possible that there could be some disruption of service
on the Mondays following each move.
EAST/WEST
A fix was implemented on 3/29/05 for the classification search errors occurring
3/26 – 3/27. A fix for the date range search errors was implemented
on 4/02/05. The incidents were posted on the weekly issues list.
Reporting UPWS Hardware and Software Problems
Reported issues are posted on the PSF issues list. The process of reporting
issues to the USPTO is being reengineered and an update will be provided at
the next meeting.
Office of Public Records Update
Customer Service Box Facility Status
The OPR Document Delivery Facility boxes are working as of 4/18/05. Some
of the access codes were changed and those users affected by the change are
being notified.
At the end of the meeting Martha Sneed distributed drafts of a new UPWS 2.6
Users Guide and of a manual on performing “Current Classification Searches”
for feedback from the public.
Ted Parr adjourned the meeting at approximately 2:50 p.m.
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