USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends [UPDATE]

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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. Here’s a copy of the letter that a source, who regularly deals with the USPTO, passed along to me:

I’ve sharpened it a bit with Photoshop, but in case you still find it hard to read, here’s the text:

SubmitterUnited States Patent and Trademark Office
Notice of Document Faxed Upside Down

Your request to record a document in the United States Patent and Trademark Office was received via electronic fax on [date and time in 2010 omitted].

The faxed submission was received upside down. We are unable to continue processing these images.

Please resubmit your document.

If you have any questions, you may contact our customer service center at [number omitted].

Office of Public Records

Usually when I see something really peculiar, I try to put myself in the place of the person doing what seems inane and think of reasons why perhaps it makes more sense than it seems. Only, I can’t see any possible reason. What, it’s faster to send a fax in return and wait for a response? They don’t have technology that allows turning the images around? Maybe the patent for that particular nicety of image processing is lost somewhere, probably filed upside down.

If they get the 15 percent increase in fees, will they at least agree to rotate the images? So much for radical improvement. I still can’t get over that they appear to have a form letter for this.

[UPDATE: Despite the many questions that people have raised, it turns out that the USPTO does not have a good reason for this silliness. You can see more details at my latest coverage of the story.]

Tags: U.S. Patent And Trademark Office, Fax, Erik Sherman

Erik Sherman is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine, Technology Review, the Financial Times, Chief Executive, and other publications. Follow him on Twitter.

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1

bnet21212

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

You've misinterpreted 'upside down'. Presumably, it refers to the
face. A page that is faxed with the wrong face down will be blank
upon reception.
2

ErikSherman

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

According to the people involved, that is not the case. The page was simply put in bottom side first. Otherwise, the response would have been that the received fax was blank.
3

timdaniels1

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

My thought is that they receive all faxes electronically into some format (not pdf) with client software that does not allow them to rotate, or probably make ANY changes to a document they receive.

It might even be mandated for legal reasons that they not modify the images and rotation=modification...
4

renzema

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

Someone probably filed a patent for turning the page the correct
way and the patent office doesn't want to pay the license fee!
5

ErikSherman

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

timdaniels1, the normal format for fax images is TIFF, and that's about as standard as you can get. I understand about the potential legal interpretation, but I'd then argue that you don't have to modify the file, you just have to modify the viewing, so you're not changing what actually comes in. But I understand your impulse - I kept trying to come up with a rationale for why this would happen, except I simply can't, because it's too silly.

renzema, I like your explanation.
6

DCDAdvancedTech

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

Although this sounds inane a possible reason why is they are a patent office and everything that goes in there has legal ramifications. What if they THOUGHT it was upside down and it really wasn't? They object in the drawing was supposed to be in an upside down position? They do not know, so, fax it correctly.
However if it is just a document without drawings, then this is just silly beuracracy!
7

ErikSherman

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

DCDAdvancedTech, the problem is that if there's that little contextual information to tell whether an image is upside down or now, how can you even tell that it came in upside down? In that case, you'd think there would be an explanation more akin to, "We can't tell whether the image is upside down or not, so please indicate and resend." And given the number of judgment calls that happen in the patent examination process, there are plenty of people there making decisions based on what they see.
8

coolhand99

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

I suggest the USPTO add a note to the page "as received by FAX at USPTO on (date)" and be doen with it. They could send the noted page back to the sender along with the form letter stating "this is what we received and will be in the record. Contact USPTO if you disagree". Responsibility is wiht the sender.
9

bertphillipsiii@...

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

Did the submitter actually call and ask for a explanation? Did they
get one?
10

qwerty0123

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

This fax is from the Assignment Division, which means that there are no drawings on the paperwork, it is only a text document with signatures. The USPTO refuses to record documents that are received upside down, either by fax or electronically. I'm not sure I understand why they are not allowed to rotate pages, but then again, if something takes longer and makes less sense, then that procedure is readily adopted by the USPTO.
11

ErikSherman

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

qwerty0123, thanks for the explanation. I guess some things never change.
12

ZoomerZ

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

Letterhead? If they USPTO has loaded paper with pre-printed letterhead into the fax machine, then an upside down fax would print over the letterhead at the "bottom" of the page, thereby being unreadable.
13

ErikSherman

02/04/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

ZoomerZ, it's a good try, but they say that they get the faxes in electronically, which suggests that they're being read on a screen. And even if they were being printed out, why would you send forms from someone else to expensive letterhead when you could use less expensive copy paper? That would be equally silly.
14

reader79

02/05/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

Hi,

If they are to rotate the image, the information added by the fax machine (e.g. date/time received, source fax number, etc.) would have been inverted when the document is filed. They probably don't want to rotate the folder if they want to read the added info ... there may already be a patent on rotating folders to read upside-down text and they don't have a license for it
15

ErikSherman

02/05/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

It turns out that this seems to be doing nothing for the USPTO and that it plans to eliminate the "feature" by March: http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/02/04/government-response-to-upside-down-faxes/
16

ZoomerZ

02/05/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

Take 2: OCR (optical character recognition) software cant 'read' upside down.
17

peterblaise@...

02/05/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

It's very challenging for the Patent side of the US Patent and Trademark Office to maintain a 3-year to 14-year backlog, so this tactic appears to be one of many inventive resources brought into play to accomplish their goals to always well behind the commercial marketplace they are Constitutionally enfranchised to serve.

The form-letter reply is probably a holdover from the days of typewriters and envelopes where the US Patent and Trademark Office probably also rejected submissions that were inserted in envelopes upside down.

If this is on the Trademark side of the US Patent and Trademark Office, it makes sense that their multi-million dollar outside contract programmers would have never implemented the age-old software industry standard for fax rotation if it was not specifically itemized on a programing request, in fact, the contractors would them willfully hide such an unspecified feature as fax rotation (which can be done automatically) so they could charge another million dollars to later unhide that feature when the Trademark managers realized they needed such a feature.

But this new-fangled fax technology is such a struggle for old-fashioned offices to implement. See:

http://www.hffax.de/html/hauptteil_faxhistory.htm

"... development of fax to a Scottish inventor, Alexander Bain, who was granted a patent for his creation back in 1843 ..."

Give 'em a break -- this fax technology is only 167 years old now.
18

peterblaise@...

02/05/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

Take 3: auto rotation is an integral feature of modern OCR (optical character recognition) software
19

peterblaise@...

02/05/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

See"

http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/02/04/government-response-to-upside-down-faxes/

"... Patent Office ... it was "not a stupid government policy." Rather, it's a problem with their antiquated IT system ... their system automatically sends such letters when a fax is received upside-down, and that nobody in the department actually sees the faxes or sends the letters ... their IT department was "working on it, and it should be fixed in March ..."

So, lemme see, in 167 years the rest of the world was able to handle upside down faxes except the US Patent and Trademark Office?

And I'm right -- another million dollars to unhide the solution included in every fax software extant.

Note that the US Patent and Trademark Office is paid for my patent and trademark applicants, not taxes from the general public, the customer themselves are paying way to much for way to little service.
20

blackbenz2010

02/05/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

I can't believe no one mentioned the possibility that the
person receiving the fax is just too stupid to operate the
toolbar on the software displaying the "upside down"
<ocument. A second overlooked possibility is that because
most data entry at the PTO is handled by contractors, (who
unlike the government itself have no restriction on hiring non-
US citizens) many of these people do not speak English. The
third and final possibility is that according to SOP (Standard
Operating Procedure) at the PTO, the tech support personnel
(formerly known as "clerks") may be simply shifting whatever
work burden they can, to someone else.
21

ErikSherman

02/05/10 | Report as spam

RE: USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes; Demands Resends

Oh, how I wish some of the suggestions were actually the truth. Here's my latest update, with the USPTO admitting that its systems are antiquated: http://industry.bnet.com/technology/10005131/more-on-the-uspto-upside-down-fax-mess-it-systems-20-years-out-of-date/