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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."
My guess is that they don't print them any more, and it was a PITA to turn your entire monitor upside down!
And I don't mean that in any sort of disrespectful way. This just seems more suited to the "idle" section for its absurdity.
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.
When your tax money is being used to pay for the phone call / ISP fees / time of the staff involved in informing the sender of the issue instead of rotating a piece of paper 180 degrees in their hand, yes.
Yes I do.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
This isn't the patent office insisting on professionalism, it is the patent office insisting on bureaucratic nonsense.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.