USPTO to introduce ‘safer’ login
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced yesterday that users of the Electronic Filing System (EFS)-Web and the Private Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) System will need to use a “new, safer, and simpler” login.
It comes after an outage at the office which sparked criticism from lawyers.
The USPTO said the new login will be introduced in October.
“The new method will save time by granting access to multiple USPTO systems with one consolidated sign-in and will eliminate shared credentials by providing practitioner and support staff with their own USPTO.gov accounts,” said the USPTO.
In addition, the office said that it has modernised security processes with a two-step procedure, and that the updates will ensure that the USPTO is in compliance with the latest Federal Information Security Management Act requirements.
The USPTO is telling all public key infrastructure (PKI) certificate holders and support staff to create USPTO.gov accounts now if they haven’t already done so.
Next month, the office will release a migration tool to allow current PKI certificate holders to link their USPTO.gov accounts to their PKI certificates.
This link will allow USPTO.gov accounts to access EFS-Web and Private PAIR systems.
In November, registered practitioners will be able to sponsor their support staff to work on their behalf by giving them access via a USPTO sponsorship tool.
The transition from the current PKI certificates to the new authentication method must be completed by December.
The login updates come after the USPTO’s patent systems went offline on August 15 until August 23.
As reported by WIPR, the maintenance issues related to the agency’s PALM database, which supports systems such as EFS and PAIR.
As a result of the outage, patent lawyers told WIPR that they have been left with costly alternative filing options.
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