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Wednesday, September 03, 2003

OHIM struggling with common Web standards?

In a

short note published on the

OHIM website, announcement is made that it has been decided to make the CTM Bulletin available on the website as of September 2003 and to replace the paper version of the CTM Bulletin by a PDF Bulletin on CD ROM. As of September 01, the subscribers to the paper version of the CTM Bulletin will receive a PDF version in replacement. The Bulletin should be available under

this URL.

However, I have tried to gain access with my latest Netscape 7.02 browser as well as with the MS Internet Explorer 5.50 but both attempts failed: Netscape suffered a "JavaScript Error" while the Internet Explorer completely freezes in when attempting to execute some embedded JavaScript code like "javascript:displayBulletin('2003/071');".

Moreover, the OHIM recently proudly had announced its

facilities for on-line filing. A few weeks ago I considered to make use of this part of the OHIM website but it also failed both with MS Internet Explorer as well as with Netscape.

So I am rather curious to learn if any user of the OHIM website has managed to overcome these obstacles at all. Perhaps the Office would be well advised to talk to their techies (or perhaps sub-contractors?) for advising them to create a more usable website which is not narrowly tailored to a very particular environment at the user's side. Probably most of the JavaScript code cluttering the website should be reviewed with scrutiny.

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