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Face-PALM: US Patent and Trademark Office database down for 5 days and counting
No end in sight yet to mystery maintenance 'issue'
The US Patent and Trademark Office has taken a novel approach to dealing with the problem of patent trolls. The solution? Shut everything down.
The Patent Application Locating and Monitoring (PALM) database forms the backbone of a distressingly large number of US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) systems and, during some maintenance at 04:30 ET on 15 August, "experienced an issue".
More than five days on, PALM is still down. As such, this is more akin to the Titanic experiencing an iceberg "issue" rather than a straightforward turn it off and on again.
Systems impacted include the USPTO's Electronic Filing System (EFS), the Public and Private Patent Application Retrieval (PAIR) systems and the Electronic Patent Assignment (ePAS) among others.
36 hours after the outage began, the USPTO kicked off its contingency systems so users could at least still file patents (in theory), if not access saved submissions. Users were not convinced.
A coworker called the USPTO and was told not to trust contingency...proceed at your own risk. 🙃
— Sarah (@lesmisarahbles) August 17, 2018
The USPTO also accepts paper filings but, er, will charge $400 if users insist on not using the electronic systems. Which, of course, are not working too well at the moment.
Unfortunately for customers struggling to make their filings, the kind old USPTO does "not plan to extend deadlines", according to a statement by Andrei Iancu, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO. Bad news for anyone trying to maintain their patent.
Predictably, users have turned to Twitter to express their unhappiness with the situation.
When your job relies on an electronic filing system that has been in a state of "maintenance" for two days and still isn't working: #USPTO #ihateexpressmail pic.twitter.com/wrWvJHzBRP
— Ali Anderson (@alimcanderson) August 16, 2018
For its part, as well as dusting off its elderly fax machines this morning, the USPTO has called in "experts in databases, operating systems, and storage" to help solve the PALM issue. However, workers showing up at the office today, hoping to find things up and running, are likely to be disappointed.
Although our work teams are looking for ways to accelerate or compress activity to bring faster results, it is unlikely the PALM restoration will finish by Monday morning. Our focus continues to be on complete and accurate restoration of service. Info at https://t.co/ubQl26112Y.
— USPTO (@uspto) August 19, 2018
Best wheel out those golf clubs, eh? ®