IP Intellifile Beta-Tester Report from the EFS Discussion Group

The EFS users discussion group is an email list server. You can post to the list and your email message will reach everyone on the list. The idea here is that people who are trying to get the EFS system to work properly can share experiences and ideas with each other, and hopefully we can all eventually get the system to work.

To join, send email to imailsrv@patents.com and in the body of the message, say subscribe EFS Homer Simpson except that you should use your own name instead of "Homer Simpson." You will receive a welcome message. To post to the discussion group, send email to efs@patents.com. Your email will reach all members of the group, just like this one --

"In this category falls my story of using Intellifile for a new Utility filing last week. . . .

. . . Ran the XML conversion and after 2 tries everything seemed great and the XML application looked fine. Again, no problem.

Hit submit - everything looked great & then got a message the Transmission was unsuccessful and not submitted. Back to the drawing board - called Intellifile - played with some options - tried several more times.

Lo & Behold - every attempt was sent to the PTO - serial #'s assigned - and deposit account charged. DOH! For some unknown reason, the PTO acknowledgement was not getting back to our system even though EBC could show it was dispatched. After many emails and phone calls - Intellifile has changed the error message to say 'Call EBC'; had to express abandon several duplicate applications; and had to request refunds.

Learned a lot about how the system works and am much wiser for the pain. Intellifile is definately beta - but they are supposedly working on diagnostic software that will run on your computer and make sure you have all the right stuff - that in combination with automatically converting any drawing type to TIFF will be advantageous.

Still a little too tender to try again right now, but looking forward to smoother sailing.

BTW - Latrice Sims from PTO Finance dept has been great; Mike Simpson from Intellifile was very helpful as was Terri Raines from EBC. "