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USPTO to add surcharge on non-DOCX patent applications in 2023

federalregister.gov

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Re: USPTO to add surcharge on non-DOCX patent applications in 2023

#71

Post by a1369209993 »

programmarchy wrote: post #48
oneplane wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OCR has come a long way, so much that visually interpreting a PDF is about as error-prom as parsing XML output from Microsoft in non-microsoft software.

Try extracting tabular data from a PDF! With XML it's trivial, but for PDF you need highly specialized software packages to do this. One of the best, pdfplumber, is largely based [1] on a Master's thesis titled Algorithmic Extraction of Data in Tables in PDF Documents [2]. [1] https://github.com/jsvine/pdfplumber/blob/stable/pdfplumber/... [2] https://trepo.tuni.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/21520/Nurmi...

> for PDF you need highly specialized software packages to do this.

Not really, or at least not all that specialized. You need:

a: a pdf-to-raster-image converter (ie any working PDF viewer, plus maybe the X server it talks to)

b: a reasonably decent OCR system capable of scanning tables (definitely nontrivial, but hardly "highly specialized" since things other than PDFs display data in tables).

Re: USPTO to add surcharge on non-DOCX patent applications in 2023

#73

Post by nescioquid »

mordero wrote: post #64
nescioquid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the salient question is why is the government officially adopting a proprietary file format? Why is it important to optimize for the trivial convenience of patent applicants? It seems more like rationalization than reason.

Isn't docx technically an open file format? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

That's a standard for a file format, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a free/open format. I don't think the FSF, for instance, considers it open (maybe because of patent issues). I'll leave that for you to decide, but just mean to suggest a standard doesn't automatically mean free/open.

Interestingly, a section in the wiki article linked mentioned the standard proposal was controversial because ODF already existed (and ODF was considered less complicated as a specification).

Nevertheless, good point. It depends on what you mean by "open".

Re: USPTO to add surcharge on non-DOCX patent applications in 2023

#74

Post by sidewndr46 »

jfk13 wrote: post #31
ndiddy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Office Open XML file format is extremely complex, and takes up around 6,500 pages (compared to ~1000 for ODF). One thing you notice when reading the DOCX spec is that they designed it with the sole constraint that DOC files could easily be converted to DOCX. For example, you'll frequently see compatibility tags like "autoSpaceLikeWord95", "footnoteLayoutLikeWW8", "useWord2002TableStyleRules", and "lineWrapLikeWor…

So true. "It's XML, so it must easy to parse and manipulate" is such a naive, even misleading attitude. If what you do is take a byzantine, legacy-encrusted implementation and just serialise its data strucures to an XML representation, very little has been gained. [edit: but I will grant that almost anything is better than attempting to parse useful content from PDF.]

I had a CTO who told me that "anytime someone says something will be simple because it uses XML, just repeat what they said and use the word text instead of XML. Then tell me if it sounds smart."

Re: USPTO to add surcharge on non-DOCX patent applications in 2023

#75

Post by moistly »

0x457 wrote: post #62
molsongolden wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was just about to post this. Unzipping DOCX and parsing XML is much easier than accurately processing PDF submissions.

Why not make yet another XML standard for patents and generate PDFs from it?

Or just use Docbook and the standard, open pipelines for publication to print and web.

Re: USPTO to add surcharge on non-DOCX patent applications in 2023

#76

Post by sidewndr46 »

bragr wrote: post #36
jedberg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like most of those translate to "We build our automated systems around DOCX so you get all our features if you use it". But it doesn't really say why they chose to build on docx.

>But it doesn't really say why they chose to build on docx. Is requiring the DOCX format just adding another step in the process for applicants? Actually, it's the opposite. The USPTO conducted a study and found that over 80% of applicants are authoring their applications in DOCX format (through writing tools such as Microsoft Word). Because the files are originally in a DOCX format, uploading the original file elimi…

Wait, what? So they convert from DOCX to PDF after you upload? But you have to upload DOCX? This sounds like the worst of both worlds.

Re: USPTO to add surcharge on non-DOCX patent applications in 2023

#77

Post by xvilka »

dingle_thunk wrote: post #70
xvilka wrote: post #65

Why require only proprietary format? It's a pity they wouldn't allow ODF.

Office Open XML (docx), to be fair, is a non-proprietary standard. Microsoft has been forced into that by the EU; and they keep messing with it, but it is actually technically "open". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

It is open only on paper - at least half of it MSO-specific compatibility cruft, plus real documents often contain binary blobs that aren't described in the standard. Name "open" is a lie in this case. Moreover, it's made in ISO only because of corruption of these standardization bodies. It wasn't even properly reviewed!

Re: USPTO to add surcharge on non-DOCX patent applications in 2023

#78

Post by moistly »

meragrin_ wrote: post #41
hedora wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say that 80% of the submissions used to be converted to PDF from word. I'd be interested to know where the other 20% came from.

There's this one guy I've dealt with. He uses a editor he wrote himself. He'll convert his documents to Pages and then use Pages for any other conversion needed.

Pages reminds me of using various desktop publishing apps. FrameMaker, Ventura, InDesign.

I used to be able to eke out accurate page layout in MS Word, but it was always fraught and more difficult. But if you’re not perfectionist about layout precision, MS Word provides the same meta-data encoding function through the application of style (‘this is a heading’, ‘this is a definition’, etc).

Re: USPTO to add surcharge on non-DOCX patent applications in 2023

#79

Post by moistly »

If you’re not perfectionist about layout precision, MS Word provides the same meta-data encoding function through the application of style (‘this is a heading’, ‘this is a definition’, etc), as one can get from structured document layout applications like FrameMaker, Ventura, InDesign, Quark.

If the PTO has provided an MS Word Style Template and a document schema (document template), it is dead easy to extract a useful XML encoding for further analysis. There is a lot you can ignore in an MS Word file. Dead easy to write XPaths and XQueries that provide an API for the original DOCX document collection.

Re: USPTO to add surcharge on non-DOCX patent applications in 2023

#80

Post by thayne »

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #6

I've been working on some tools that integrate with USPTO (both from the application side and the validation side) for quite a few years now and they've been making a TON of formatting changes recently. A lot of their PDF forms have changed, they're requiring XML versions of all data we submit, they're handling classifications differently, etc. Their process always felt like it was stuck in the past and being handled…

But why choose a (effectively) proprietary format?
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