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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?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:34PM

    by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:34PM (#499307) Journal

    And what does [inserting advertisements into pages delivered through cleartext HTTP] have to do with someone subtly modifying claims in patent documents as the OP suggested?

    The technical ability to perform one implies the technical ability to perform the other.

    Have ISPs been caught doing that?

    Not yet.

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