5 ms·

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

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=c6652fc79b8430b1460405f774b76fde&tab=core&_cview=0 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.

ig1 12y ago
No you couldn't. You could build something half-baked that didn't work in the majority of cases. If you think you could build a fully-operational EDMS system capable of handling a variety of documents coming in from different source, provide workflow management, change control, auditing, accurate search, reporting tools, analytics, third-party integrations (CRM, email,etc.), FOIA support, etc. in a couple of days then I'd suggest you try it. There's a reason USPTO wanted an off-the-shelf solution rather than building their own, it's a lot cheaper and faster to buy something pre-made than to spend millions building your own.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  If you think you could build... Oddly enough, The Internet Archive did a substantial portion of just that: https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/bookreader https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/bookreader It's used by numerous other organizations as well: https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/bookreader#users https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/bookreader#users
  - ig1 12y ago
    I don't think you understand what USPTO need, it's not just a scanning system, it's an entire workflow system.
    - phkahler 12y ago
      But workflow systems can't do shit with scanned documents other than route them via human instructions.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      I didn't claim TIA created everything the USPTO requires. I did point out that they created precisely the element you indicated was challenging: accomodating different document types from different sources. Given that the USPTO's system is likely based on electronic filings at this point, even the scan-and-present aspects of the BookReader solution are likely more than is required. Another salient point is that by breaking the problem into discrete components, you're more likely to come up with a viable solution, or at least significant portions of one. And I've worked on a number of systems (FDA clinical information systems) which address a great deal of your other feature points. Suffice to say: such systems do in fact exist. They do, in fairness, take more than a couple of days to assemble.
- nawitus 12y ago
  I think the problem is the "competition free" part.
  - ig1 12y ago
    Read the linked document, they looked at other vendors, all the other vendors that could meet the requirements needed to make significant (charged) customization to their product to bring up to spec. LM had the only product that could be used off-the-shelf.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      While I generally agree that the government should buy something off-the-shelf that's already built -- and at a quarter-million dollars, this doesn't even come close to boondoggle territory -- sometimes the requirements are set explicitly to grant the purchase to a specific buyer the government had in mind, instead of the requirements really being generated in a neutral manner and then looking at the marketplace.
rayiner 12y ago
> This should be handled with a web-based system that would take most people on this site a few days to write and test. Ah yes, the mythical "system that [should] take . . . a few days to write and test." Gives me flashbacks to running code in Visual C++'s debugger during a live demo so I could edit and continue if it crashed.

ig1 12y ago

No you couldn't. You could build something half-baked that didn't work in the majority of cases. If you think you could build a fully-operational EDMS system capable of handling a variety of documents coming in from different source, provide workflow management, change control, auditing, accurate search, reporting tools, analytics, third-party integrations (CRM, email,etc.), FOIA support, etc. in a couple of days then I'd suggest you try it. There's a reason USPTO wanted an off-the-shelf solution rather than building their own, it's a lot cheaper and faster to buy something pre-made than to spend millions building your own.

dredmorbius 12y ago
If you think you could build... Oddly enough, The Internet Archive did a substantial portion of just that: https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/bookreader https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/bookreader It's used by numerous other organizations as well: https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/bookreader#users https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/bookreader#users
- ig1 12y ago
  I don't think you understand what USPTO need, it's not just a scanning system, it's an entire workflow system.
  - phkahler 12y ago
    But workflow systems can't do shit with scanned documents other than route them via human instructions.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    I didn't claim TIA created everything the USPTO requires. I did point out that they created precisely the element you indicated was challenging: accomodating different document types from different sources. Given that the USPTO's system is likely based on electronic filings at this point, even the scan-and-present aspects of the BookReader solution are likely more than is required. Another salient point is that by breaking the problem into discrete components, you're more likely to come up with a viable solution, or at least significant portions of one. And I've worked on a number of systems (FDA clinical information systems) which address a great deal of your other feature points. Suffice to say: such systems do in fact exist. They do, in fairness, take more than a couple of days to assemble.
nawitus 12y ago
I think the problem is the "competition free" part.
- ig1 12y ago
  Read the linked document, they looked at other vendors, all the other vendors that could meet the requirements needed to make significant (charged) customization to their product to bring up to spec. LM had the only product that could be used off-the-shelf.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    While I generally agree that the government should buy something off-the-shelf that's already built -- and at a quarter-million dollars, this doesn't even come close to boondoggle territory -- sometimes the requirements are set explicitly to grant the purchase to a specific buyer the government had in mind, instead of the requirements really being generated in a neutral manner and then looking at the marketplace.

rayiner 12y ago

> This should be handled with a web-based system that would take most people on this site a few days to write and test. Ah yes, the mythical "system that [should] take . . . a few days to write and test." Gives me flashbacks to running code in Visual C++'s debugger during a live demo so I could edit and continue if it crashed.