Filling-out USPTO PDF forms with bibliographic/attorney data [Lite+Shells and Pro+Shells versions]


This feature allows you  fill-out USPTO forms.  Specifically, ClaimMaster can populate various placeholder fields in the USPTO's PDF forms with the information downloaded from the USPTO and attorney/firm information stored by ClaimMaster.


Getting Started

  • From the ClaimMaster Ribbon, click on the USPTO Office Actions, Shells, and Forms menu, then select Populate a USPTO form with application/attorney info:


Feature Options

Selecting the above feature will show this window, which has the following options available: 



    1. Enter the application or patent number in this field.  You can also select a value from all of the entries loaded in the biblio cache using a pull-down menu.
    2. Press this button to download bibliographic information for the specified application number (item #1) from Patent Center. For unpublished apps, use manual import from Patent Center private view.
    3. If this checkbox is selected, ClaimMaster will proceed to download the bibliographic data directly from Patent Center rather than loading it from biblio cache.  The newly downloaded bibliographic data for this application will then be stored in cache.  If you switch to the Biblio Source and Cache Settings tab here, you'll have access to the following options:



    1. Specify whether to use Patent Center (automatic), Patent Center (manual scraping/import). 
    2. Reserved.
    3. Various bibliographic replacement fields in this table will be filled in when "Lookup biblio data" button (item #2) is clicked.  If you have specified any additional replacement fields, those will be listed as well.  The values in these fields will be used to replace placeholders in the response template.  Unselect the fields you do not want to replace in the document and they will be simply removed from the final version. In addition to any custom fields you specify, the following replacement fields are available and will be replaced in the template, when a full document is generated:
    1. This tab shows the download log for downloading the bibliographic data from Patent Center.  Any download issues, such as time-outs or unavailability of specific download information, will be specified in the log.
    2. Click this button to edit the information or the tag for the currently selected replacement field.
    3. Click this button to select/unselect all replacement fields.
    4. Click this button to configure/edit custom replacement fields.
    5. Here you can specify whether to capitalize inventor/examiner/applicant names and title in the replacement fields. You can choose to keep the original capitalization, initialize first letters in each word, or capitalize all words.
    6. Use this field to specify whether to display a list of pre-AIA USPTO forms, after-AIA forms, or all existing forms.
    7. This pull-down menu allows you to filter forms by their type, as reflected on the USPTO's website.
    8. You can perform a text search for specific forms by typing in the search keyword here and clicking "Filter."  Only forms having the keyword in their "Code" or "Description" fields will be shown.  To clear any filtering, press "Clear".
    9. In case you need to fill out multiple forms at once, you can create you own form groups.  This drop-down lets you specify the previously defined form group. Once you select it, all the forms in the specified group will be highlighted at once.
    10. To create a new group of forms, select one or more forms in the table below, add the group name and click on "Save".  Alternatively, clicking on the "Remove" button will remove the given group.
    11. Press this button to re-download all PDF forms from the USPTO, overwriting the existing forms.
    12. This table shows all available USPTO forms (filtered by type or keywords).  Click on a particular row in the table to select the form for further processing.  You can select multiple forms either by dragging your mouse across the selection or using Ctlr + mouse click to select multiple forms simultaneously.  

Note: if you select multiple forms, a valid Save directory (item 11) is required and all selected forms will be saved there once they are filled out.

    1. Click on this button to generate a USPTO form based on the selected form, where each of the replacement fields is replaced with information from item 4.  Any unselected replacement fields or items without values will be removed from the final PDF form.
    2. The "Save Settings" tab lets you specify various save options for the forms (e.g., save directory location or preferred file names for the forms):



    1. Here you can specify the directory where you'd like to store the filled-out forms.
    2. If this checkbox is selected, ClaimMaster will place all filled-out documents in a zip file in the specified save directory.
    3. Here you can specify a custom file naming template for the generated forms using replacement fields that will be replaced with the actual bibliographic/date information for each generated form.  For example, "[APPNUM]_[FORMNAME]_[DATE]" or any other combination of the available fields.  Please take care not to use characters in your template that are forbidden by Windows in file paths, such as * " / \ [ ] : ; | ,. The following replacement fields can be used in the file naming template:
      • [APPNUM] - application number
      • [CUSTNUM] - customer number
      • [DOCKETNUM] - docket number
      • [FORMCODE] - USPTO form code
      • [FORMNAME] - full form name
      • [DATE] - today's date