From a reader:
The PTO really needs to figure out how to do one thing one way, instead of having multiple unrelated systems doing parts of the same thing in different ways. Like, how many leading zeros do you need? PATFT, PAIR, EPAS all work differently. Are slashes OK, or not? Can you put commas in, or not? They're even inconsistent within a single system - the ADS form for EFS-web has two different places for entering a customer number - one has a leading zero, the other rejects it. Go figure.