Office of Public Records
Public User’s Meeting
August 17, 2005
2:00 p.m. - Randolph Building Conference Center

The Public Users Meeting was held at 2:00p.m.in the 1st floor conference room 1D04/D14, Randolph Building on the USPTO campus at Carlyle in Alexandria, Virginia. Martha Sneed chaired the meeting. There were approximately 6 members of the public in attendance and 8 USPTO staff.

Introductions

• Martha Sneed – Director, Office of Public Information Services
• Ted Parr - Acting Executive, Customer Information Services
• William Moses - Acting Director, Office of Public Records
• Doug Salser - Project Manager, Program Management Office

Announcements

The Public Search Facility will be closing at 7:30 PM on Friday evenings during the month of August due to a Campus-Wide Power Outage. The power outage will begin on Friday evening at 8:00pm and end Saturday morning at 6:00am.

On August 14, 2005, the Office of the Chief Information Officer announced the activation of a limited wireless access network, providing limited wireless access to Internet for laptop users. Access will be available on a daily basis from 6:30 AM to 9:00 PM (Monday-Saturday).

Currently, the Madison auditorium, the Roundhouse Café, and the Madison atrium are the only campus locations where the wireless network can be accessed. Additional wireless areas are planned for the Public Search Room and the STIC library in the future.

Data Center Relocation Closeout

The USPTO Data Center Relocation effort was completed the last weekend in July. Overall, the entire relocation effort went well with very few problems. Over the course of this effort over 4300 inventoried items, 900 servers, 450 terabytes of storage, and countless network devices were relocated.

Public Search Facility Update

Due to delays in the deployment of EAST, public beta testing of PubEast will be delayed until October 1, 2005, at the earliest.

Beta Testing of XSearch 1.9 has been put on hold due to unforeseen problem that will affect the Public Search Facility.

Office of Public Records Update

Marilyn Ricks-Beach, Manager of the Document Services Division, reported that DSD was not included on the Exception Listing under the Patent Central Fax Center OG Notice of July 12, 2005. Customers are reminded to send faxed orders to DSD’s fax number.

Assignment Branch:

There were no problems reported, however, Public User Paula Keatley requested verification of the fax number for Assignment Branch:

• Rhonda Nicol, Supervisor, Assignment Division, will follow up to ensure that Ms. Keatley receives the correct fax number.

Questions:

• According to Public User Rupert Brady, there were notices posted all around the Carlyle Garage that the building would close at 10:00pm, but the Public Search Facility closed earlier than the normal 8:00pm.
  • Diane Lewis will investigate and report out.
• Mr. Brady also expressed concern over the inconsistency between information available to the public via the Employee Locator & the Kiosks located in the lobbies.
  • Per Department of Commerce mandate, employee locations should not be published in any public directory.
• According to the Public User Paula Keatley, there were concerns that there needs to be more information on the web site regarding PTO activities.

The meeting was adjourned at 2:25pm

Next Meeting:

The next meeting will be on September 21, 2005 at the same location.

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