USPTO blocks web access to “Political/Activist Groups” including KEI, ACLU, EFF, Public Citizen, Redstate, DailyKos

Update: At 5 pm the USPTO called and said that the public access wifi network was using a filter, provided by a contractor, to block “political activist” sites. This filter was not used by the network providing Internet access for the USPTO staff. After our meeting, the USPTO reviewed its policies, and has removed the filter. USPTO says the filter was implemented by a contractor, and no one we talked to at USPTO was aware of who was being blocked. In any event, the filter has been removed.

Update 2. See: https://www.keionline.org/node/1549

Today I was visiting the USPTO, for a high level meeting on global negotiations on intellectual property and access to medicine. The meeting was held in the Stockholm Room, on the 2nd floor of the USPTO library, at the main USPTO building at 600 Dulany Street, Alexandria, VA. The USPTO also uses these meeting rooms for its Global Intellectual Property Academy (GIPA). The USPTO offers free Wifi for the visitors. But when I tried to login to , I received this message:

Access Denied (content_filter_denied)

Your request was denied because this URL contains content that is categorized as: “Political/Activist Groups” which is blocked by USPTO policy. If you believe the categorization is inaccurate, please contact the USPTO Service Desk and request a manual review of the URL.

For assistance, contact USPTO OCIO IT Service Desk. (io-proxy4)

We checked and found that the USPTO blocks access to a number of groups that have followed SOPA and the TPP intellectual property negotiations, particularly those critical of the USPTO positions on intellectual property issues. Among the NGOs that were blocked were aclu.org, cdt.org, citizen.org, eff.org, healthgap.org, keionline.org and publicknowledge.org. Among the sites NOT BLOCKED were the industry lobby groups BSA, MPPA, RIIA, and PhRMA.

The USPTO also selectively blocks certain blogs and new sites, including, for example, dailykos.coms, firedoglake.com, redstate.org, rushlimbaugh.com and talkingpointsmemo.com.,

Here are examples of what the USPTO blocks, and does not block.