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Users Will Only be Able to View Patents via HTTP; HTTPS will no Longer Work

posted by n1 on Monday April 24 2017, @07:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the one-step-forward,-two-steps-back dept.

martyb writes:

The USPTO (Patent and Trademark Office) has updated its Public Patent Application Information Retrieval (Public-PAIR) service so that it no longer supports HTTPS (secure) access. From the announcement with emphasis added:

Public PAIR Maintenance and Outage

The USPTO will be performing maintenance on the Public Patent Application Information Retrieval (Public Pair) beginning at 12:01 a.m., Friday, April 21 and ending at 2 a.m., Friday, April 21 ET.

During the maintenance period, Public PAIR will be unavailable.

Immediately after the maintenance, users will only be able to access Public PAIR through URLs beginning with HTTP, such as http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair. Past URLs using HTTPS to access Public Pair, such as https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair, will no longer work.

Can anyone explain why there would be this seemingly backwards move to insecure communications?

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:56PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:56PM (#498997)

    Wouldn't it be cheaper to pass laws that ISP's cannot mess with and sell the traffic so that everybody and their dog don't have to buy and manage friggen certificates for "read only" websites?

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  • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Tuesday April 25 2017, @01:57PM

    by Justin Case (4239) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @01:57PM (#499296) Journal

    No.

    Laws don't solve technical problems. Only politicians and idiots (but I repeat myself) believe that.

  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:43PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:43PM (#499312) Journal

    Wouldn't it be cheaper to pass laws that ISP's cannot mess with and sell the traffic so that everybody and their dog don't have to buy and manage friggen certificates for "read only" websites?

    The ISPs are buying a lot of senators to ensure that they're allowed to spy on that traffic. If the USPTO is having trouble finding a hundred bucks for a cert, you really think they can afford to buy back half of Congress?