Welcome to AccelPro IP Law, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Julie Burke, Expert Witness on US Patent Practice and Procedures at IPQuality Pro.
Burke, a former patent scientist and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) quality assurance specialist, special program examiner and patent examiner, focuses in our conversation on the USPTO’s updated DOCX filing requirements.
We talk about Burke's paper on DOCX filing and rendering errors, DOCX filing requirements and the type of errors IP practitioners may encounter when filing DOCX patent applications in the US.
“Even though all the text is there from the beginning to the end, applicants receive a notice of missing parts with no way to move forward,” Burke says.
“This jams up prosecution for months to come, because it's taking on average 170 days for our sample of applications that have been petitioned for the Patent Office to respond. That's a very lengthy time to have your application stuck on hold in pre-exam with no way to move forward. The error itself is not one created by the applicant, but you have to file the petitions and pay the fees and wait and see if you can get it fixed.”
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