A user reported the following:
"This concerns Java versions 6u26, 6u29 and 7. The USPTO had difficulty implementing version 6u29, could not implement version 7 at all, now is experiencing problems with 6u29 and asking the public to install 6u26 again.

BROWSER VERSION:
Firefox

USER-AGENT :
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0

A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM :
URGENT: The United States Patent and Trademark Office just re-released a notice that "Please refrain from installing Java 6 Update 29 and Java 7" because they are unable to implement your versions Java 6/29 and 7.
This means that filing patents and access to USPTO records has been severley impaired since they were released. They just recently requested that users back-download v.6/26!
Yet they give vague instructions on how to do this. PLEASE work with them to correct this situation and at least for now, SET ASIDE A WEB PAGE just for USPTO users on how to download and install v.6/26 over more recent versions, the USPTO referring page is confusing.
http://www.uspto.gov/
Ref: contact: Contact the Patent EBC at 1-866-217-9197 or ###@###.###"

Alert from USPTO:
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/ebc/eCommerce_eAlerts.jsp