CHANEY LAW FIRM BLOG

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How long will my patent application take?

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A couple of patent law professors run a great patent law blog called Patently-O, and they recently came up with a great chart showing how long it takes to get a patent issued once it's been filed — an average of 34 months. If you're interested in patents, you should check out Patently-O — it's got great commentary on most of the important patent cases from the last several years.

You can also check out the USPTO's Patent Dashboard, which I reported on a couple of years ago here. It has lots of information, updated monthly, on pendency statistics for patent applications. An excerpt appears below:

Chipping away at the monolith

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I've been fighting State Farm in a couple of federal court cases in east Arkansas. I had to ask the Court to order State Farm to produce its claim handling materials. These are the documents that show whether you get a fair shake from your insurance company. Usually, even if the documents say what they're supposed to (platitudes, we call them), the insurance company didn't follow the guidelines. The judge agreed with my client, and order State Farm to produce those guidelines. There's a good synopsis at the Property Insurance Coverage blog, so check it out.

Adding a PDF printer for Wine-based Windows application on a Mac (How-to)

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My previous post showed you how to install a Windows-based PTX viewer on a Mac. The next project is to install a PDF printer so you can convert .ptx files to PDF and open them natively with the Mac.

We're going to use MacPorts again to install a package called CUPS-PDF. This is very similar to the "Save as PDF" feature already on your Mac. Open up the Terminal application and run this command to install CUPS-PDF:

sudo port install cups-pdf

The output of this command will give you some instructions to run upon initial setup. They are:

ln -s /opt/local/var/spool/cups-pdf/$USER ~/Desktop/cups-pdf
/opt/local/libexec/cups-pdf_links.sh
sudo killall -1 cupsd

The first command creates a link to the output folder on your Desktop. You can move this link into whichever folder you prefer. The second command will require you to be an administrator and type in your password (it uses the sudo command). 

The next thing to do is install the CUPS-PDF printer on your Mac. Go to System Preferences > Printers & Scanners, and click the '+' below the printer list. CUPS-PDF should appear in the 'Default' list. Simply highlight CUPS-PDF, click 'Add', and you should have a CUPS-PDF printer in your printer list. (This will work for printing other things to PDF too — for instance, if you want to change print options but Save to PDF won't let you, the CUPS-PDF printer is a good workaround).

Finally, we need to tell the Wine emulator to reload so it can see the CUPS-PDF printer. The command in Terminal to accomplish this is:

sudo port -n upgrade --force wine-devel

After running this command, you should be able to select CUPS-PDF in the print dialog of the E-Tran viewer. Here's the result:

Happy PTX printing!

Reading .ptx transcript files on your Mac (How-to)

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UDPATE 5/15/15: I wrote an updated post about the .ptx viewer installation process here.

Many colleagues know I have an IT background, so I field lots of Mac-In-Law-Office (MILO) questions. I got a question today and I thought I knew the answer about PTX transcript files. Alas, I learned that Clarity Legal's online .ptx conversion tool has been shuttered.

I've been able to use the emulation program Wine to run the Windows PTX viewer from the Mac. This is a how-to guide for installing the programs necessary to run the E-Transcript Viewer. It's a little bit involved, and requires some use of the command line.

First, install XCode from the App Store. If you are running OS X 10.9 (Mavericks), open a Terminal windows (/Applications/Terminal) and run the following command:

xcode-select --install

Run the following command to agree to the XCode license:

sudo xcodebuild -license

(You'll need to be an administrator of the computer and enter your password for the sudo command). If you're running an earlier version of OS X, open the XCode application, find the "Downloads" pane, and download and install the Command Line Tools from that pane.

Next, you'll need the Macports package installation manager, available here. Choose the version that corresponds to your operating system, and install the package. When it's finished, run the following command to update Macports to the latest release:

sudo port -v selfupdate

Next, we'll use Macports to install Wine, along with a couple of packages needed to compile Wine:

sudo port install apple-gcc42 git-core wine-devel

This will likely take a while. Take an opportunity to quench the thirst all this talk about wine and port created.

The next step is to install the transcript viewer, available here. Download the file, then type the following commands into your Terminal:

cd ~/Downloads
wine E-Transcript_Bundle_Viewer-6.1.1.exe

Of course, use the version number of the file you downloaded on the last command. This will open an E-Tran installation window. Wine may need to install a few packages to make this all work; just follow the prompts to install them if so. Check the default values for installation of the E-Tran viewer, and complete the installation.

Finally, we'll need to create a shortcut to the installed E-Tran application, which is hidden. Open the TextEdit application, and click New Document. Copy and paste the following lines into the document:

#!/bin/sh
wine "/Users/nathan/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/RealLegal/E-Bundle Viewer/EBundleViewer.exe"

Click Format > Make Plain Text. Save the file in the Applications Folder as "E-Transcript Viewer.command". Finally, go back to the Terminal window and enter the following commands so that the script we just created can be executed:

cd /Applications
chmod +x E-Transcript\ Viewer.command

Now, you should be able to double-click the 'E-Transcript Viewer.command' file in the Applications folder any time you need to open a .ptx file. Here's the result: