America-Israel Patent Law Blog

I’m a
big fan of the USPTO’s electronic filing capabilities, but nothing’s
perfect.  This morning while playing
around with the Electronic Patent Assignment Service (EPAS), I discovered that if you pay by credit
card, you can go back in time nearly 20 years: you can list your billing
address as being in the USSR. 
(Click on the thumbnail to the right for a larger image.)   Since I’m
pretty sure that EPAS only came online after the demise of the Soviet
Union, I wonder if this means that the person who designed the system invented
a method for time travel. 

I didn’t try
to pay this way, so I don’t know if this time traveling thing works (I didn’t
want to risk getting hit with interest charges dating back to 1991, even on a
measly 40 bucks for filing an assignment), but if it does, I wonder if the
inventor was able to get his patent application allowed by the USPTO.  My money says he had to file at least one RCE.

Or maybe
the system designer is merely nostalgic for the Beatles.