U.S. Patent Office Wins “Laziest” Award

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If you are sending something to the USP&TO, make sure it isn’t upside down…or they won’t accept it. Oddly enough, instead of just rotating it, they take the time and effort to send you a letter informing you of your error and demanding you resubmit the application.

I know, the headline seems like a joke. After all, what do you do if someone inadvertently fed a page upside down into the fax machine? You simply turn the page over or, if you get an electronic version, use the reader software to rotate it. Apparently this is not within the standard operating procedures of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. No, if your fax comes in upside down, they send you a message in return saying that they can’t accept it and to re-fax.
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Does this really surprise anyone? It's a Government organization this is standard practice. It's hilarious yes, and makes me slightly depressed, but surprising, not really.
 
Doesn't surprise me. the patent office is a bunch of lazy worthless rubber stamping morons.
 
I'm assuming they mean upside down, like the blank side of the paper got faxed instead of the side that had writing on it. Nothing they can do to flip is right side up if since fax technology only sends one side of the documents.

It happens. No big whoop.
 
They probably scan the document in and if it is upside down the OCR software doesn't work with both the fax time stamp and their submission.
 
toy4x4 said:
They probably scan the document in and if it is upside down the OCR software doesn't work with both the fax time stamp and their submission.
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Sounds likely. Sure, the Patent Office can sit there are edit your documents, or you could just send them in properly.
 
This sounds like the way american government WOULD work. Not surprising at all.
 
You're all making assumptions based on the wrong premise. That, the USP&TO is there to approve patent applications. Their purpose is to defend existing patents and any reason to reject new patents accomplishes that. That said, they're almost as lazy and bureaucratic as the National Science Foundation who actually has quotas regarding how many applications must be ok'd or denied and treats those quotas as a directive to process neither more nor less in the given time frame.
 
Not surprising. But seriously... who's lazier, the USPTO who has to read thousands of these things, or idiot that scanned it in upside down and blindly sent it. It's all about perspective. It DOES get annoying when you read a lot of pdfs that aren't oriented properly when you open them.
 
complexx said:
Not surprising. But seriously... who's lazier, the USPTO who has to read thousands of these things, or idiot that scanned it in upside down and blindly sent it. It's all about perspective. It DOES get annoying when you read a lot of pdfs that aren't oriented properly when you open them.
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But its more work to send something back than click twice to rotate...
 
Who wants to bet prior to making this letter, the government funded a 10 year, 20 million dollar research program to determine if there's some way faxes could be efficiently rotated when in digital form aka a scan of the fax and ultimately it was determined its not possible and thus a form letter was required?
 
They don't have time to rotate faxes. Who else is going to approve painfully obvious software patents:confused:
 
So i can't patent writting upside down? Damn i was gonna bank off that idea
 
No, if your fax comes in upside down, they send you a message in return saying that they can’t accept it and to re-fax.
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The funniest thing I've read this week:D
 
Makes me wonder if they OCR the faxes automatically and the crappy software can not process the fax if it is upside down.
 
What a job to have. Wasting the time to notify you instead of just turning it over. Only in the USA.
 
What is being missed here is that very many patents are so complicated and so technical that you can't very well trust just anyone to make a determination of which way is correct. For example, if there is text and a diagram, and the text is upside-down, the initial processor should not take it upon him- or herself to determine whether the diagram is also rotated, or whether the text position was intentional. Just imagine some of the ultra-intricate chemical or electrical diagrams used in the drug and computer industries.
 
Cherub said:
What is being missed here is that very many patents are so complicated and so technical that you can't very well trust just anyone to make a determination of which way is correct. For example, if there is text and a diagram, and the text is upside-down, the initial processor should not take it upon him- or herself to determine whether the diagram is also rotated, or whether the text position was intentional. Just imagine some of the ultra-intricate chemical or electrical diagrams used in the drug and computer industries.
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Seriously? The filer can simply put "TOP" and "BOTTOM" above/below any picture/text/diagram, problem solved.
 
So some patents they'll skim through, stamp it even though it has none of the qualifications of "innovation" of a patent, others, they'll say its not accepted because the fax machine spat out the paper upside down? Here's the other question, did they have to pay a refiling fee.
 
If the attorney sending in the app is too stupid to put everything the right direction, how valid is the content of the request to begin with?

Stupidity goes both ways.
 
SpeedNut said:
If the attorney sending in the app is too stupid to put everything the right direction, how valid is the content of the request to begin with?

Stupidity goes both ways.
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Attorney != automatically tech savvy...
 
Excuse me but....


WHO THE FUCK FAXES PATENTS IN?

Seriously, you have strict rules for the drawings, none of which makes it with a fax machine, and who in thier right mind would be corresponding with such critical matters over a fax machine?... ah, noone.

USPS CMRRR at a minimum, fedex prolly 95%.
 
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