Office of Public Records
Public User’s Meeting
October 19, 2005
2:00 p.m. - Randolph Building Conference Center

The Public Users Meeting was held at 2:00 p.m. in the 1st floor conference room 1D04/1D14, Randolph Building on the USPTO campus in Alexandria, Virginia. Martha Sneed, OPIS Director, chaired the meeting. There were approximately 6 members of the public in attendance and 9 USPTO staff.

Announcements

The Public Search Facility Issues List is now being updated every other week instead of every week

Martha Sneed handed out an updated list of rules of conduct for USPTO public information facilities:

• These rules are based on Title 41, Code of Federal Regulations, part 102-74, subpart C.
• They empower staff concerning public conduct while visiting the USPTO and establish guidelines to minimize disruptions.

Public Search Facility Updates

• UPWS/Systems Beta testing of the new PubWest version is scheduled for October 31 for approximately 2-3 days. The maintenance release will probably be out by November 2005 for public use.
• New version of X-Search scheduled to be released October 31 for beta testing for 1 week. This version should correct the problems that the public was experiencing. The public is encouraged to make use of the new version during the testing period in order to expose any bugs/problems before its official release.
• There are no tests scheduled for PubEAST until the end of January or first of February. The group printing problem with PubEAST has been fixed.
• The PAIR server is back up and running.

Customer Feedback:

• Some customers were experiencing problems with PubEAST.
• One customer had a problem getting the drawings to display before the description in foreign documents in an answer set after performing a Class/subclass search. The EAST team suggested that one reason for this is that display settings do not carry through when the documents in the answer set change from one database to another, e.g. when the documents change from being in USPAT to JPO.
• Customers also experienced getting duplicate information.
  • Doug Salser explained that this is the result of selecting USPAT and USOCR databases together. A result set is generated for both databases and there are some duplicates in the two databases. No programming has been done to eliminate getting duplicate information. There is no immediate solution to the problem at this time. The EAST developers have this in their requirements list for a future enhancement.
• Customer experienced EAST crashing during an attempt to transfer text; even though the PubEAST window stayed open the information he was seeking was lost. This occurred approximately 3 weeks ago. The customer filled out problem reports but had not heard from anyone in PSF with a solution.
  • Doug took an action to investigate and provide feedback - Both PSF staff and CSC developers investigated the problem and could not duplicate the behavior
• A public user suggested that instead of saving all the information in the workspace in PubEAST that only the search queries be saved and this would allow more effective use of the 25 MB memory limit in UPWS. Doug Salser talked to the EAST developers and this is already a requirement for a future release.

Questions & Answers:

• Q: Will holiday hours be handled the same as last year for PSF, e.g. no early closure?
• A: Yes.

Office of Public Records Updates

Acting Director of OPR Bill Moses handed out a copy of a new certification sheet, which will be used on certified patent application documents.

Questions & Answers:

• A customer questioned why an order for a certified copy of an assignment document was delivered via Fed-Ex when it could have be put in their customer box.
  • Marilyn Ricks-Beach, Manager of Document Services Division, will investigate and provide feedback.

The meeting was adjourned at 2:30 p.m.

Next Meeting:

The next Public Users Meeting will be held on November 16, 2005 in the same location.

KEY: =online business system =fees =forms=help =laws/regulations =definition (glossary)

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