USPTO Differences Functionality Enhancement
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The Review USPTO Differences task/yellow triangular warning is very useful, but it is also very cumbersome--I would like to ask if it can be made "smarter." In particular, I would like to suggest that it be modified so that if a flagged difference is reviewed and the user selects "Ignore" (or maybe make a new button that is "Ignore Forever"), then any future instance for that matter in which that same discrepancy is found will also be ignored.
We are faced with the situation where almost every time we PAIR scrape a matter, we get USPTO differences--and we spend an inordinate amount of time revisiting the same issues over and over and over.
For example, our docket numbers almost never actually align with what the USPTO has because we use our docket number + our client's docket number in PAIR (clients want us to do this, particularly on shared customer numbers--I'm sure we are not alone in this).
Another example is with PCT priority connections--we store the full PCT serial number in AppColl, e.g., PCT/US2015/012345, while the USPTO (for reasons I cannot fathom) stores the same serial number in the abbreviated form as PCT/US15/12345. These are identical serial numbers, but get repeatedly flagged as being "discrepancies"--every time AppColl flags these, we have to go through the process of reviewing and re-ignoring this discrepancy.
A third example is with Examiner names--the USPTO uses first name, middle initial with no period, LAST IN ALL CAPS. We use first, middle initial with period, last in normal caps. These seem to get flagged every time as well.
If the USPTO discrepancies feature/task weren't so useful, we'd likely turn off the task since it generates a massive amount of tedious work that we have to repeatedly do every time there's a PAIR scrape for a matter. If AppColl could be modified to make some sort of "whitelist" table (akin to the Contact "aliases" field) for each matter that stored each "ignored" value and then did not flag that value again if it showed up in a subsequent scrape for that matter, it would make this feature SOOOOOOO much better/more useful.
Can this be done?
