Slashdot Mirror
USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes
bizwriter writes "This may seem like a joke, but it's not. The US Patent and Trademark Office will not accept patent filings faxed in if they arrive upside down. That's right, the home of innovation of the federal government is incapable of rotating an incoming fax file, whether electronically or on paper."
Just send every single tax filing both ways. The right one gets filed, and wrong one gets rejected. Twice the work for the government.
I practice civil disobedience by sneaking into the patent office and quickly rotating the faxes upside down...
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
If only there were some unique invention they could license that was capable of such a process as rotating a piece of paper or an electronic image... Excuse me, I feel an urgent need to contact a patent attorney.
Remember to also send the email to him right side up.....
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
I just subitted a patent for inverted reading glasses.
When they buy a bag of M&Ms do they throw away all the W, E and 3s too?
be sure to put the black page right side up.
That explains it. I had submitted a process patent describing "the use of the 'rotate image' key as it relates to images that are the result of translation from a Facsimile transmission". I thought it was unique and innovative since no one uses FAX any more, but it was rejected. Similarly, my "application of human digits to vertically reorient sheets of paper that come out of a Facsimile machine in an undesired orientation" was also rejected.
My transmission must have been routed via Australia.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
... but unfortunately they granted a patent on that in 1987 and don't have the money for the absurd licensing fee the patent holder is asking. Unfortunately the "novel" method patented covers both clockwise and counterclockwise but they're currently looking into rotating them 179 degrees, making the document slightly slanted but avoiding royalties.
My work here is dung.
Albert Einstein: And what is it you want to patent, Herr Smith?
Smith: I call it "Smith's Theory of Relativity."
Albert Einstein: Hey, look at this.
Smith: What?
*SMASH SMASH SMASH*
*scribbles out Smith for Einstein*
Albert Einstein: heh heh heh
Orwell was an optimist.
I fax all my patents upside down, and I've never had one turned down!
I would just 'love' to work there now. Check each fax and for anything that is software turn the pages upside down and watch the fun.
Panic now, beat the rush!
My guess is that they don't print them any more, and it was a PITA to turn your entire monitor upside down!
Then there is the cost. Someone has to correct these mistakes. Sure they are mostly funded by patent fees, but they also have a budget of 2 billion dollars, any deficit covered by the taxpayers.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
...turning the page over would breach US Patent #65535 "Method and process for static image manipulation by manual substrate reorientation" and probably also the nototiously over-broad US Patents #55378008 "Process for Bi-manual gluteous maximus location" and #45056 "Method for organising mass inebriation events at a beverage fermentation facility".
They do have to follow their own rules, you know...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I'm supposed to feel outrage because a government office wants to save our tax money by requiring people (lawyers) too stupid to use a fax machine to correct their own mistakes?
And I don't mean that in any sort of disrespectful way. This just seems more suited to the "idle" section for its absurdity.
But wait, if you send it upside down, won't it arrive blank?
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
Because the USPTO has all the power, they can decide on anything to cut down on the number of applicants.
The same thing is also happening in the job market with all the power in the hands of employers.
It all depends on the definition of upside down. Back in the day it meant
the white side of the paper was oriented against the scanning device. All
pages were blank. Your mileage may vary.
Maybe they can search through their patent datab^H^H^H^H^H files and find an innovation or two that might work more efficiently than faxes, but of course then they'd have to pay the licensing fees. Maybe they've issued a patent on rotating faxes 180 degrees, and don't want to pay.
I work at a federal regulatory agency which is having the same issue. They were asking IT/tech/computer people if there was a solution around. Nobody knew of any software that auto rotates images based on text. Anybody? Reply here.
Since they have a form letter for this it is more then just turing the paper around. So just applying technical thinking I can think of three quick reasons.
1) The don't print them out and instead file them electronicly. OCR software would have problems with documents that have some parts upside down.
2) They apply some additional printing, barcode, date, etc that is used when storing the documents. Having info upside down would cause the info to be in the wrong place when human start handling it since they would want it in a readable order.
3) Pages are printed on both sides, same basic problems as 2.
Overall a none story unless FAX is the only way they accept the paperwork and in that case it is a matter of WTF are they still using faxes for.
Reading the FA, it could be that the faxer sent the fax the wrong way up/ down - so the office received a blank fax.
This would seem a perfectly valid reason to reject the submission
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Rather than hire more staff to handle the increasing volume of patent applications the USPTO has decided to lower its volume by requiring that you send your fax right side up. If the volume starts to get back up to normal they'll simply turn their fax machines upside down and claim that everyone needs to stop sending upside down faxes.
I am glad in this instance they are paying attention to costs. Imagine how much it would cost to rotate the entire post office every time a fax comes in the wrong orientation and rotate it back when it comes in the correct orientation. Good for them they refuse to accept such upside down faxes.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Govt is trying to save money due to budget shortfall. Here is the typical steps involved in collecting the fax that came through (Manual operation)
1. Person (Govt Employee) needs to get up from his chair
2. Walk towards the Fax machine
3. Collect the papers
4. Walk back towards his/her cubicle
5. Sit down
If people are sending fax upside down, the person has to perform an extra step of rotating the pages. By cutting that step, the govt is saving enormous amount of money. Also think about dealing with Govt Employee Union if they added this extra step
next time you're at McDonalds (or whatever), while the person is filling your order, rotate the tray.
What I mean is, they'll probably put the burguer or soda first, then the fries, when there's only the first item in your tray, rotate it.
have fun
how long until
Is it possible that the faxes were received face down so they were getting the back of the page? Just a thought...
Everyone's going to make this smart ass joke, but there's actually a serious question here.
The USPTO grants patents for utter nonsense. Then, to maintain credibility, they have to abide by the law saying that all those nonsense things are illegal for 20 years.
If someone during a board meeting pointed out that rotating electronically received data communications was patented, the board would be required to decide to stop doing that (or license the patent, but maybe they can't, or maybe the patent holder said no).
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
that's because rotating the image of a fax is patented and they can't afford the license !
My sister tried to refinance her house (she still sick and lost 50% of her income, so according to oBaMa she can refinance). She got a letter rejecting her application because according to them the ink was blue and it was too thick.
Hey the forgot to mention how many microns the ink must be (well is documented but is a secret)
Ciao
Am I the only one to ask why the office that is supposed to deal with new innovation is still using fax in the age of the internet?
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Note the lack of reading comprehension in the replies here so far.
To automatically detect that the document is upside down might also create false positives: documents that are right side up being flagged as being upside down.
The title of this comment, "umop apisdn", is upside down. How many people caught that vs how many thought that it was gibberish?
"His name was James Damore."
Wow-- this reminds me of a great Laruel and Hardy sketch where Laurel throws half of his nails away because the head is on the wrong side. Oh, I know! They're not accepting the upside down ones because they must have been sent in from Australia!
They have some kind of automated fax-to-OCR conversion and the OCR doesn't work well on upside-down docs.
Dibs on the patent for adding a converter that rotates the image and retries when the OCR fails.
Now if they only would start to reject all the other patent submissions as well
Well I guess they use fax to promote the fact that they are the center of all innovation after all.
Perhaps I should submit a "rotator" device for a patent. You takes the piece of paper in one rotator on the end of your arm. Then, with the help of another rotator on the end of the other arm, you turns the piece of paper through 180 of them degrees. Hot dang I'm on a winner with this one! I hope I submit a patent first on this, but it's a chicken and egg thing. What if I submit it the wrong way round?
A a recent job fair, the patent office recruiter picked his nose the whole time he was talking to me. And he was really digging in there really deep - not a Seinfeld-style scratch. Even for a good salary, I didn't even consider applying. I'm not surprised that the people who work there can't rotate a document.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
No, it's important that people know about this. Maybe then they'll finally understand the rampant stupidity and outright waste that is so prevalent throughout the entire government. You can't truly understand its magnitude if you haven't experienced it first-hand, or at least heard of policies like this.
Imagine if this happened in the private sector. The manager who came up with the policy would be laughed at, and then promptly fired.
They can avoid the patent. Rotating through 180 degrees is the same as two reflections, across (any) two perpendicular lines.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
Rather than asking why some employee of the USPTO can't flip the scanned faxes in Adobe or some other PDF viewer at *our* expense, we should be asking why we aren't blaming the $500/hour patent attorney who screwed up his filings and who (and not his client) should absorb the cost of refiling.
Who here has printed these posts and faxed them to the PTO upside down?
It's sad that faxes are even used. They should standardize on an XML format or PDF format document to be submitted electronically.
Actually, I think it was Binkley that said that, not Milo.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Fax them twice, once per direction on that axis! ... Better make it 4 times just to be safe. ... oh crap, and another 4 times upside down. You have to be sure!
Mail them a message back stating that their letter arrived upside down and could not be processed, and for the USPTO to please send another copy...
That one's just an application. Here's one they granted in 1994:
Rapid detection of page orientation
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
They accept everything else, written by monkeys or not.
Now, if it is true that the PTO is incapable of rotating a piece of paper, that is sad news indeed. BUT, usually when someone is accused of faxing a document "UPSIDE-DOWN" it means that they have placed the paper with the content side facing away from the scanner. Meaning the fax that comes through on the other side is mostly just blank sheets.
With out the full story here, it sure seems like the sender is just bragging about his inability to use a fax machine...
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I'm sure I've heard this description before somewhere...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I found one patent they granted that they might be worried about:
(And a poster higher up found this application, which is still in the examination phase: 20090274392: page orientation detection based on selective character recognition.)
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
It was like when I worked in construction. When hammering in a nail I would pull one from my bag... if it was facing the other way I knew it was for the other side of the wall. I always wound up with about 50-50 split of nails facing one way or the other.
It depends on how they reject it. If they're just silently rejecting anything that comes through incorrectly oriented, then they're spending no effort, and they don't have to review the patent of the person who was too lazy to check the orientation and later to check the progress of the patent.
Now, maybe they handle it in such a way that it results in more effort for everyone, but there are applications of a "no upside-downeys" that result in confounding shovelware patents and saving effort for the patent office.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
... and this is the crowd we want running health care? Just imagine ... your claim for $100,000 for that emergency heart surgery has been denied because the forms were faxed to us upside down. Of course the notice that you owe $100,000 will arrive 3 months later so that even if you are able to send it in right-side-up to get it approved, interest and penalties will apply (see IRS regulations for many examples of this).
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
The funny thing is that if this were about the IRS, no one would think twice. Why? Because they do not accept things done incorrectly. Now this is a generalization... but from the inside I can tell you we get non-stop garbage from applicants/attorneys. No matter how clear the office makes things, no matter how many times an applicant sends in things done incorrectly and are corrected by the examiner, they still continue to do it. This wastes time, energy, and resources. Why do we have to do an attorney's job for them? (and actually that brings up another point... they pass off a lot of their work to assistants, clerks, and admin staff who screw it but between them and us) If it were up to me, I would automatically reject any application that does not meet proper application filing criteria the first time. On the flip side, I would make those criteria as clear as day and published online not more than one level deep off the main page. Now, I will also say this: before anyone here can bash the PTO, you need to have worked here, because only then can you understand how things really are. A majority of us here work very hard, care about doing a good job, and want to help make the system work. The fact is that it is hard to do this job *truly* well, and keep up morale when we fight many of the things we do on a daily basis. The list is huge, and I won't go into it here... but trust me, for 99% of it, it is not the examiners who muck up the works.
"This technology stuff is just plum crazy!"
These are the same people that are going to run our health care. Better hope you don't get in an accident and they bring you in feet first. They may reject you and insist you get in the back of the line and come in head first.
Could it be that the USPTO flipping the image constitutes altering the image?
Beware of the Leopard.
If you can't send the fax correctly, why should they care? You've started out sloppy, so you probably have other stuff messed up as well. You're just wasting their time.
This isn't a problem. Just fax everything four times rotated in different ways. Always works for me.
Print out the Patent application so they can only be read by using a mirror.....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
on One-Click Faxing. That's why they make us rotate the image as the extra click.
If only Albert Einstein was still a patent clerk we wouldn't have this problem.
...of course, the patents would probably be in German, but it would be right-side up of course.
I side with the patent office on this one. I write software for medical offices, and receiving faxes on the computer is part of that. To rotate an upside-down fax 180 degrees only takes 1 click in my software. But why the heck should my users have to do that all day long because somebody (it's always the same doctor's offices) is too lazy or stupid to put the paper in their fax machine the way the little icons on the fax machine indicate? Yes it's a very very small irritation, but it's one that really should not exist at all. And what about long faxes where the pages are jumbled and the orientation switches randomly throughout? Seriously, if you drop the fucking chart on the floor, put it back together properly before faxing it to us. Do not expect your recipients to play "52-page pickup" with your faxes!
What... are these "fax"-machines? I thought it was customary to explain arcane, antique or cutting-edge terms in the summary. I think I heard once, that there is one of these machines hidden in one dark corner of our office, mainly used by the office troll to send out pranks to rivaling companies.
They can still implement software that automatically detects and rotates software patents to the wrong direction.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I worked with imaging systems a decade ago, and solutions at that time already have no problem auto-rotating scanned images.
Don't want to post an ad here for big-name-scanner-company, but maybe you need to look for more competent vendors (or possibly more expensive solution) if yours cannot do auto-rotate.
Oliver.
Its a fax machine bolted to a lazy susan. As soon as a fax comes in, if fax is printed "upside down", all a tech has to do is rotate the lazy susan. So I went and filed this great new invention, but apparently it was rejected as the patent office received it upside down.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
They must be using some patented technology to detect that a fax is upside-down, and they probably think they need to license the patent if they automatically fix the fax. But I'm sure they also need to pay the license fee even if they just reject the fax. Or maybe there's an opportunity here - "detect and reject" upside down faxes.
I know I'm posting too late for anyone to read my comment, but for what it's worth the USPTO may be saying that they submitter put the papers into the fax machine literally upside-down, so that the USPTO received blank pages. If I received this return fax, that's what I'd assume it means. I used to work in a copy shop, and sometimes people would send us blank faxes so I'd send out a letter similar to this asking them to resend the fax after turning the pages over.
A few years ago I applied for and receive a patent number 1905647384656 for "Inverting and sending printed material digitally over phone lines." Since the PTO has refused to pay me royalties ($.20 per page) they are legally bound not to process inverted fax documents. My next patent in the queue is on "Viewing printed material sent digitally over phone lines." This patent is pending but is likely to approved shortly.
They'll apparently accept crap applications for obviously unpatentable technology... just as long as the FAX is right side up.
The US Patent Office is inundated with patents. If you can't follow directions I see no reason why they should have to work harder to fix your mistake. This sounds like an efficient use of government time and funds. Sure they COULD put in software to rotate the documents, but why?
To best appreciate the article, type this into your URL bar:
Firefox: javascript:document.body.style.MozTransform="rotate(180deg)";void(0);
Safari/Chrome: javascript:document.body.style.WebkitTransform="rotate(180deg)";void(0);
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
picks up the faxes and hands them to a right handed person, then the fax will be reversed. Maybe your voting machines have the same problem as the USPTO. They won't accept votes from left handed voters ;-)
Seriously, they get to dumpster dive and file all the discarded patents submitted "upside down" and claim them. On another note, why aren't forms web based with an option to upload supporting documents and images ?
This is... patently ridiculous. I'll get my coat.
Maybe they're rejected because they're blank?
Laudele lor desigur m-ar mahni peste masura.
Sort of reminds me of how I won't respond to a coworker's IM's unless they have correct subject-verb agreement. Once we have that down, we'll move on to punctuation.
Here in Asutralia we don't accept faxes not sent upside down.
Maybe sending a fax upside down and then rotating it 180 degrees does not result in the same thing as sending a correctly oriented fax?
See, a fax doesn't necessarily contain only the faxed material.
What if some additional meta-information is printed on it? Then that info is in the opposite orientation from the rest of the fax, no matter how you rotate it.
Gee, I can't imagine how that could ever possibly cause problems in some automated filing system for faxes.
This probably stems from a law or rule that says that the USPTO isn't allowed to change any of the images that are sent to them. (On the surface of things, a reasonable rule.) When they started receiving faxes straight to images on a hard drive, someone decided that turning the image over is changing the image that was sent to them. (Which... every computer person in the world that knows what they are talking about will tell you is true. It may not affect the image much. But it would change the image file.) So... do the sensible thing and turn the fax over, losing your job because you broke the law (or rules)... or send a fax asking that the fax be resent in the correct orientation. I know what I would do.
Since few will RTFA, at least read the title. Won't is different than can't. Maybe it's a good thing to expect some standards with the submission. In time, if people learn the rules of submission we should expect that most submissions would be done correctly.
The next step is to require submissions to be for something legitimately patentable, but one step at a time.
In other news, apparently there are enough people inventing things and filing for patents but still incapable of operating a fax machine. I think that this is a perfectly reasonable, preliminary test for patentability. If you can't fax your application in right-side-up and with the printed side of the page transmitted instead of the blank side, then you are too dumb to have invented anything novel. (And remember Edison and the light bulb: If you aren't willing to try faxing your application four times to be sure that it arrives in the correct orientation, you probably don't know how to fail at your invention enough times to get it right, either.)
I know people that work for the USPTO, their response is why are you filing a Patent by FAX?
They have online submissions, why would you print and then fax such an important document.
Maybe the submitter need to get up-to-date!
I thought it was en vogue not to worry about faxual orientation.
Why are you telling me that my document is "upside down"? In a routine fax transmission, page orientation (top of the page first into the machine or bottom of the page first) is not critical because the reader can easily flip and arrange the pages to read them top to bottom. However, it is critical to our process that each page is faxed top to bottom with the top margin being fed first into the machine. Once they have been received in PTAS, fax transmitted assignments are processed strictly by electronic means. Although the PTAS software can rotate a document 180 degrees for viewing purposes, when the electronic document is extracted to generate the archival microfilm record, each page is extracted exactly as it was first received. Accordingly, a document sent "upside down" would be microfilmed upside down. To further complicate matters, because the system generated recordation and reel and frame markings on the pages would be in the opposite orientation, the resulting document would be difficult to read.
Pretend I said something meaningful or insightful here.
Reminds me of this old Norwegian sketch about tech support in middle ages
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRBIVRwvUeE
I applied to patent just such a device myself back in 1984... My application was rejected. You'll never guess why.
uop psdn p o o no nb ,up1no 'p upo s u buz s, .s op p1no odsn puspun ,u
Inconceivable!
I do not think it means what you think it means.
I practice before the USPTO. This kind of thing is fairly common for the agency. Actually, I am pretty blase about this one. But that tells you what kind of organization it is, I guess. I lost may capacity for outrage years ago.
Is the huge USPTO icon really necessary?
Just send every single tax filing both ways. The right one gets filed, and wrong one gets rejected. Twice the work for the government.
Or just fax it correctly in the first place--it's not difficult. Face down, nine-edge first.
Uhhh.. What am I missing here? If they reject upside-down faxes, this must mean they can tell the difference between a fax which is upside-down and one which isn't. In which case, maybe there is some kind of solution, such as rotating the image 180 degrees?
Do they mean it's on the other side of the paper or that the text is upside-down? I can almost see their frustration if the text is upside-down.
People who do not know how to use a fax machine correctly do not deserve a patent.
The USPTO would save a ton of time if they hired Vader for their customer service. "Apology accepted, Patent Troll!"
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
How lazy must you be to fax your patent in? Hey, I had this great idea - why don't I just trust 1980 technology to handle it....
Exactly! then use another program to flip every one back 180 degrees to the right direction!
This is to protect us from patent trolls! See, if the patent application comes in upside down they can't properly read it and assuming it's just too technical for them, they approve it. According to their own numbers, after implementing this right-side-up only format frivolous patents have declined by over 3L)%!
why does the USPTO official seal have a bald eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch while appearing to ready itself to poop on the American Gladiator shield? I mean, these sort of imagery should be more appropriate for say the Airborne corps or the Airforce, not some deskbound attorneys who can't rotate their faxes 180 degrees. And why is the bald eagle's head awkwardly turned so that it looks like it is trying to bite fleas from under its wings? A visit to Wikipedia shed no light on this matter. Anyone here who is versed in heraldy and could explain this strange seal?
I wonder what happens if you MAIL your patent application in. When the person at some desk opens the envelope ..and your paperwork comes out "upside down" ..do they:
i) have the technology to rotate the pages?
ii) discard the application for reasons in the article?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe they meant that they were upside down as in "blank". It happens many times that someone doesn't know which way the written side faces when putting them in the fax.
With their heads jammed so far up their asses?
Well obviously, there's just enough room left in their collective asses to fit the fax machines in there too !
This is just a plot to keep our friends from Down Under from patenting anything in the US. And that goes for their neighbors with the sheep and Kiwi fruits as well...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
While I agree with most posters here that it's a silly rule I would point out that the fax header orientation in this case is opposite of the body orientation. If what is in the header is important to the USPTO (timestamp?) they may have a minor point.
Is it possible that this rule is in effect so that a diagram of an invention isn't misinterpreted by being read upside down. If the digram is of something odd or strand that isn't easily recognizable, and if it is accidently read upside down without knowing it is oriented properly, this could pose problems, right? So, if a requirement that all documents are sent in an upright position, such a requirement would help resolve any possible problems with a digram being read upside down and therefor misinterpreted.