Public Records Division/Public Information Services Division
Public User’s Meeting
May 17, 2006
2:00 p.m. - Remsen Building Conference Center

The Public User's Meeting was held at 2:00 p.m. in the 1st floor conference room 1D04/1D14 in the Remsen Building on the USPTO campus in Alexandria, Virginia. Martha Sneed, PISD Manager, chaired the meeting. There were approximately 7 members of the public in attendance and 7 USPTO staff.

Announcements

Parking access may be impacted by PTO Community Day activities. Some streets and side streets may be closed or partially inaccessible.

Follow-up to questions from the last meeting:

• Concerning whether the Franconia warehouse would be moving. GSA must give 2 years notice before any move or change. There is no plan to move from Franconia space at this time.
  
• Concerning public user access to the upper floors of Patent buildings for readier access to examiners. Security is not changing the current policy of not permitting access to those areas.

Public Search Facility (PSF) Updates

The front doors into the PSF have been repaired.

Abandoned trademark application files have been microfilmed. The film will be available in the PSF by no later than May 26.

Universal Public Workstation (UPWS) and Applications:

Privilege settings for Derwent World Patent Index in the Public Search Facilities have been adjusted to match those for examiner access.

The PTOWeb application on UPWS went down for several days because of firewall changes made to certain other systems. The problem was identified and remedied, and access restored.

In order to search the manual of classification and classification definitions the PubEAST text browser must be set in the html viewer.

The display format can change when navigating through a result set that crosses databases . This is a known bug and is being fixed for the next release of PubEAST.

The image size problem is a known bug and is being fixed for the next release of PubEAST. Currently, if the problem occurs press the number 5 key to return the image to normal size .

PubEast will have a maximum of 3 releases per year: 2 maintenance and 1 enhancement.

A diagram was distributed during the meeting illustrating the relationships between the EAST and WEST interfaces, the search engine and the various patent databases a ccessible through the patent search system available in the PSF.

Missing images of foreign documents are added to the image database as they are obtained by USPTO.

Questions: Do account settings move with the user's ID? Not with UPWS. The user must reset with each workstation accessed. Saving workspace boxes popping up in UPWS is being investigated.

Question: Will EAST be available through the Internet? A product is being developed for examiners working from home; it is also being looked into for use by the public.

PRD Updates

No meeting has been set yet to address the issue of document retrieval problems from Suitland, MD.

Public assignment documents are on microfilm; some of the more recent (1999 to present) are also in the electronic database available in the Public Search Room. Only documents that contain public numbers will be available.

The meeting was adjourned at 3:00pm.

Next meeting is scheduled for June 21, 2006 in the Remsen building conference room 1D04/1D14 at 2:00pm.

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

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