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Things We Hate About the USPTO.GOV Website, #4

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at November 17, 2005 04:53 PM

USPTO's website is http://www.uspto.gov.

Guess what happens when you go to http://uspto.gov. If you guessed "The page cannot be displayed," give yourself 10 points. If you've ever typed in uspto.gov and received the same error before, give yourself and additional 10 points.

I'm not really sure what it is called..."domain mapping" maybe, but I'm pretty sure its an easy thing to fix. (maybe someone will leave a comment explaining how to fix it)

Previous things we hate: No. 1, No. 2, No. 3.


Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1) trackback

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Comments

Adam Rosi-Kessel Says:

November 18, 2005 07:50 AM

They would just need to define a DNS entry for uspto.gov that points to the same IP address as www.uspto.gov (151.207.245.67), and then add an entry to the webserver to accept requests for both domain names. Any competent system administrator would have already done it. I administer a few dozen domain names--it would take me less than the type it took to type this comment to complete the whole operation so that "domain.com" went to the same place as "www.domain.com."

Brandy Karl Says:

November 18, 2005 06:38 PM

It's ridiculously easy. I think the problem stems from (I'm guessing) that the site is really old. Back in the olden days, it was pretty common to see x.com, www.x.com, and web.x.com all resolve to different things. The olden days were 10 years ago, btw. Ah, the speed of efficient government!

Alfie Says:

December 1, 2005 07:30 PM

Here are two related peeves about the site in connection with PAIR Access and Publication for your No. 5:

Both Publication and Public PAIR access to U.S. national stage applications of PCT's for which there is public access is woefully delayed and is not occuring within the time frame set in the rules (18 mos. from priority). The result - unnecessary trips to VA to inspect files, and potential problems re: incorporating the U.S. national apps by reference, creating more paper.

Richard Roseen Says:

January 11, 2006 11:57 PM

I have been creating websites for my businesses since 1997. Not a single web site hoster I ever paid for did not have dns entries already set up for both www.domain.com and domain.com.

Then I got into understand Linux and the full implementation of Apache and its settings. And that showed me how to set Apache settings for the www.
or any other *.domain.com alais.

I called the web site Unix expert at the USPTO that contact with while I was an examiner and explained that he did not have the www alais set up.

The USPTO website expert was SO STUPID all he said was that my browser was not smart enough.

I gave up arguing with the idiot.

That is the level of expertise of the IT department at the USPTO when they pay such low salaries. Check out the job offerings for IT at the PTO on the site. They are real real low on the GS scale.