EFS and Windows XP
Here are comments from Jay Yablon and Raymond E. Roberts about XP
Jay Yablon says:
I just purchased a new Windows XP computer, and much to my chagrin discovered that Microsoft yanked the "Kodak Imaging" software that it used to bundle with its earlier products in favor of its own, highly inferior, MS-Paint software. Those of you who file electronically will know that patent drawings must be submitted in CCITT group 4 fax format.
Kodak imaging software was the only software I knew of that could save a scanned drawing into this format. MS-Paint does not save in this format, and not only that, it crashes the supposedly crash-proof XP system whenever it is used. Also, if you talk to anyone at the PTO electronic business center, they will tell you that the PTO does not yet support XP for EFS. While EPAVE and USPTO Direct do work on XP, PASAT does NOT. However, if you use PASAT on a non-XP machine to create an XML specification with drawings, and then move the XML specification over to your XP machine to file, this will not work because EPAVE will look for the drawings embedded in the PASAT file based on the directory structure of the non-XP machine where the XML file was first created. So for all practical purposes, it looked to me like it was impossible at this time to do electronic filing from an XP machine, pending the development and release of XP-compatible software from the USPTO.
However, thanks to the help of Glenn L. Webb on the patentpractice list, I found out that you can download Kodak Professional Imaging for Windows from www.eistream.com. There is a free demo, or you can purchase the software for around $100. This software solves BOTH problems! It gives back the imaging functionality (including CCITT group 4 TIF saves) that Microsoft took away from XP when they yanked Kodak Imaging, and, all of a sudden, it allows PASAT to work on XP, so that you can do all aspects of electronic filing on an XP machine! This software has all the functionality of Kodak Imaging and the same user interface, plus some extras.
I was flabbergasted at first, but in thinking about it, this must mean that PASAT relies on certain common system files (e.g., dll's, etc.) that automatically were installed on all windows 95, 98, 2000, etc. systems that came with Kodak imaging, and that the yanking of Kodak Imaging from Windows XP took with it certain common files that PASAT needed in order to do its job. I have no Idea if the developers from the Patent Office know that PASAT relies on system files that originated with Kodak Imaging and not with Microsoft Windows, and that their PASAT software will become fully functional on XP machines so long as those Kodak Imaging common system files are returned onto the XP machine.
So, besides advising you all of this, I am sending a copy of this to Mr. Winslow in the Electronic business center at the PTO EBC who told me that EFS could not be done on an XP machine, so that he can forward this to his colleagues before the PTO sinks a whole bunch of time into chasing its tail trying to create a new version of PASAT for XP when all they really need to do is replace the common files that Microsoft yanked along with Kodak Imaging. I suppose they may need to license those files from Eastman software, and then put those onto their future PASAT releases.
Raymond E. Roberts reports:
I am happy to report that PASAT can be run under Windows XP as follows.
The Kodak imaging software used for PASAT by versions of Windows prior to XP includes the major components: IMGADMIN.OCX and IMGTHUMB.OCX.
As many of us have found, however, one cannot simply copy these files onto a WinXP system and run PASAT. Before applications can use these they need to be registered in the Windows Registry using the regsvr32.exe utility program (a hidden system file in most installations of Win XP). Attempting this fails if a number of minor components are not also present.
In addition to components already present in WinXP, the "minor components" needed by IMGADMIN.OCX and IMGTHUMB.OCX are imgcmn.dll, oiadm400.dll, oidis400.dll, oifil400.dll, oigfs400.dll.
So, from WinME one can obtain the files:
IMGADMIN.OCX IMGTHUMB.OCX imgcmn.dll oiadm400.dll oidis400.dll oifil400.dll oigfs400.dll
and copy them to a folder named, for instance, C:\Program Files\K-Imaging on a WinXP system. [I prefer this over the system32 folder, to avoid possible problems and to facilitate clean up once we do get a replacement for PASAT.]
Using the Run... command one can then perform registration using these commands (the quotes being necessary):
regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\K-Imaging\IMGADMIN.OCX" regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\K-Imaging\IMGTHUMB.OCX"
This works because the registration utility is able to find and handle the minor components automatically.
After this, running PASAT on my WinXP/OfficeXP system involves merely starting in the normal manner and responding to an Enable Macros prompt. Working with images on my WinXP/OfficeXP system now is the same as in every past system I have used for EFS.
CAVEATS! The above information is offered as is. At my sole discretion, I may or may not respond to technical questions regarding this. There may also be copyright and license issues raised by improper use of this technique.
Raymond E. Roberts offers these additional comments.
Having now filed 10+ applications under WinXP/OfficeXP on my personal workstation without any problems related to that platform, we have now successfully used the batch program below for installing and registering the imaging files needed to run PASAT under WinXP on other workstations.
CAVEATS: This information is offered "as is" and should only be used in a legal manner.
TECHNICAL NOTES: If you are installing from a CD drive or location other that D:/ you will need to edit the batch file for this -- and those lines need to be edited in TWO separate places. This not been tried this using a Win98 CD. The respective CAB files are likely different. But other than edits to accommodate that, this is probably quite doable.
INSTRUCTIONS:
BATCH PROGRAM CONTENT (edit if needed; copy and paste into a txt file and rename it *.bat):
REM Batch pgm starts here MD "C:\Program Files\K-Imaging" CD "C:\Program Files\K-Imaging" D:\win9x\extract.exe D:\win9x\WIN_19.CAB IMGADMIN.OCX IMGTHUMB.OCX D:\win9x\extract.exe D:\win9x\WIN_14.CAB oiadm400.dll oidis400.dll D:\win9x\extract.exe D:\win9x\WIN_14.CAB oifil400.dll oigfs400.dll D:\win9x\extract.exe D:\win9x\WIN_11.CAB imgcmn.dll regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\K-Imaging\IMGADMIN.OCX" regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\K-Imaging\IMGTHUMB.OCX" Pause REM Batch pgm ends here