And in other news, today the USPTO gave Lockheed Martin a $268,910.52 competition-free contract because it is apparently the "only" company in the United States writing enterprise software.

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c6652fc...

It's good that the White House backed off here, but the USPTO is still an ungodly mess.

I have been politely asking both USPTO and the White House to fix the problem where courts report IP assets involved in litigation via a form called AO 120 for some time (months)--to no avail. AO stands for Administrative Office, which means the judicial branch controls the form. To view all of these forms on PACER it's $0.10 per page. Fortunately, they're shipped (really, shipped) to USPTO where they're made available on an automated FOIA site. That's great, except that they're printed and scanned, and huge numbers of them are filled out incorrectly; stamped with various crazy stamps; entirely blank in fields, etc. Also, different courts report case numbers completely differently.

This should be handled with a web-based system that would take most people on this site a few days to write and test. But here we are, in 2014, trying to convince the people who decide what is and is not an invention in the United States of America that they should start using the web.

Hmm, they're parsing the reports a bit stronger than I am. The nomination is held back for now, but it hasn't quite shuffled off the mortal coil yet.

PS - If folks are interested, the new satellite USPTO office in San Jose would love to hear from you! Come to Hacker Dojo and talk to the Hackers & Founders team if you want help setting something up with the USPTO staff. Or talk to Silicon Valley Leadership Group, who also has good relationships with them (probably better, to be fair!).

Considering the administration's public statements in the past, this would have been a pretty surprising pick for them. How sure were people about the nominee. Also, anyone know anything about the acting director from google?