"Partridge" Patent Application Monitoring Software Update

Electronic patent filing maven Carl Oppedahl, has pointed out that his free "Partridge" patent application status monitoring software will also stop working when the USPTO discontinues support of Legacy Private PAIR at 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time on 31 December 2006.

According to Carl's post to the Partridge Liserv,

There are several things that Partridge does that cannot easily be done any
other way, including:

• monitoring the outgoing correspondence and other salient events across all of your customer numbers at once
• monitoring events in patent applications of third parties

Ever since USPTO released the "portal" version of Private PAIR many months ago, I have been begging USPTO to please provide documentation as to how user software such as Partridge would be able to gain access to the "portal" Private PAIR. Thus far USPTO has not provided it. If four more months pass and USPTO still does not provide it, then everybody's Partridge software will stop working.

Here are the things that I think will help.

First, please write a letter to John Doll, USPTO, P.O. Box 1450, Alexandria, VA 22313-1450, with a cc to me, asking that USPTO please document this access well before December 2006. It may help if you can mention how many patent applications you file in a year. Please list a cc to me on the letter and please send a cc to me, Carl Oppedahl, Oppedahl & Olson LLP, P.O. Box 4850, Frisco, CO 80443-4850. This will help Partridge, and will also help any other people who have tried or are trying to develop software which obtains information from Private PAIR.

Second, if you have not already done so, please subscribe to the Partridge list server. Instructions for subscribing can be seen at http://www.oppedahl.com/partridge/ .

Third, if you feel so inclined, I would be grateful if you could drop me an email message (or a posting to the list server) saying how important the Partridge software is to you and what it does for you that cannot easily be done any other way -- for me to use in advocacy to the USPTO and to encourage others to consider using Partridge. (Don't worry, we are not secretly planning to stop giving it away for free!)