Public Records Division (PRD)/Public Search Services Division (PSSD)
Quarterly Public User’s Meeting
April 12, 2017
The Public User’s Meeting was held at 2:00 p.m. in the Global IP Academy, Madison East, 2nd floor, at 600 Dulany Street on the USPTO campus in Alexandria, Virginia. Donna Cooper, Director of Public Records Division, chaired the meeting.
John Owens, CIO, was available via WebEx to field any questions the public may have concerning a number of issues.
Announcements
Christine Kitchens, Director of the Public Search Services Division, was introduced to the attendees.
Public Search Facility Status
On the day of the meeting, it was discovered that PAIR was not available from UPWS. The cause for this was identified later that day and the issue was resolved on April 29th. UPWS and EAST were also impacted and were unavailable at times
Public Records Division Status
Nothing new to report.
Q & A with John Owens
John reported on the status of legacy Patent tools replacement projects; most of the projects are on schedule. The public will be asked for assistance in testing the new search tool, EST, as that comes closer to completion. Plans are that all tools will be replaced by 2020.
Q: Why is the CPC manual display so different from the USPC display?
A: The Office of Patent Information Management (OPIM) provided us with the following information regarding CPC and USPC displays:
CPC is arranged in: Sections, Classes, Subclasses & Groups
Example: CPC Symbol - C05B 1/02
- Section - C
- Class - 05
- Subclass- B
- Group - 1
Sub group - 02
USPC is arranged in: Classes and Subclasses
Example: USPC Schedule – 71/33
- Class - 71
- Subclass - 33
High level Comparison CPC vs USPC
Additional help concerning Classification resources is available at links below:
- USPTO Intranet: https://www.uspto.gov/patents-application-process/patent-search/classification-standards-and-developmentCPC Training: http://www.cooperativepatentclassification.org/Training.html
- CPC Classification Structure (CBT): https://www.uspto.gov/video/cbt/cpc-structure/index.htm (see slide2)
- Q: There are no Chinese patent images for the last three years in FPRS. Will these be available at some point?
A: There are no images available for People’s Republic of China patent documents for the legacy search tools, but abstracts are being loaded from EPO provided DOCDB data deliverables. It was initially planned to do a project that would utilize the images from GPSN and load these in to the legacy search system. With the advent of the PE2E Search, the replacement for the legacy search tools, a requirement has been put in the backlog for loading and displaying these images in the new search tool.
Presently, the loading of SIPO images was prioritized for Phase 5 or later in PE2E Search. This will be FY2018 or later.
The Public User’s meeting adjourned at 2:30 pm. Next meeting date: September 14 at 2:00 pm.