The USPTO has various Notices alerting an applicant to such things as Allowance, Missing Parts, and apparently, Upside Down Documents.  Yes, you read that correctly.

Blogger Erik Sherman recently outed the USPTO’s archaic practices and equipment with an actual example that is both ironic and hilarious, if not also a bit pathetic.  A practioner submitted documents to be recorded with the USPTO via electronic fax, and received in response a form letter with the following content:

Submitter

United 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

If you can still read through your tears of laughter, it gets better.  Not only does a form letter exist for such a situation, the fact that an upside down fax would prompt a response at all is mind-boggling. Document rotation is, I suppose, an acquired skill.

An explanation of this phenomenon was offered by the USPTO, which basically attributed the problem to ancient equipment.  Several quick fixes come to mind, an obvious one being having a human TURN THE DOCUMENT AROUND.  And with filing fees and other prosecution costs increasing, perhaps even, dare I say it, purchasing fax machines produced at least in the last decade.

Thoughts? Suggestions for the USPTO? Please do leave a comment :)