USPTO outage update: paper patent filers to receive refund
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has said it will issue refunds to applicants forced to pay higher filing fees while the agency’s patent systems are unavailable.
As reported yesterday by WIPR, the USPTO has been undergoing “emergency IT maintenance” since its systems went offline on Wednesday, August 15.
The USPTO issued a status update at 4pm ET yesterday, advising that “our best estimate is still that service will be restored sometime tomorrow” (ie, today, August 21).
It added the caveat that “many factors” are involved in restoring the services, so this timing may change.
Last week, the USPTO said the maintenance relates to a problem with the agency’s PALM database, which supports systems such as the Electronic Filing System, Patent Review Process System, and Patent Application Information Retrieval System.
The USPTO invited people to use alternative methods of filing in the meantime, such as sending in applications, documents, and fees via priority mail.
However, a fee of $400 is applicable to international patent applications by post, and the same application made via the electronic filing system costs just $240.
Speaking to WIPR, Ariel Reinitz, partner at FisherBroyles’ New York office, explained that the surcharges are intended to encourage electronic filing but while the systems are down, they are “unavoidable”.
Kevin Holbeche, owner of Canadian firm Holbeche Law, told WIPR that lawyers may have to pay higher fees to meet deadlines while the systems are offline.
“Since deadlines must be met (despite the outage), the USPTO is effectively penalising applicants even though paper filings are the only option,” Reinitz said.
On Friday, Andrei Iancu, director of the USPTO, said that the agency is not planning to extend deadlines given the availability of alternative methods of filing.
According to the USPTO’s latest status update, “applicants affected by this outage will have an option to avoid, or receive a refund of, paper filing fees”.
Iancu will reportedly be providing a process to allow for this to happen.
“Applicants who follow this procedure will maintain their original filing dates for applications filed by paper during the outage,” the USPTO said.
In response to the news, Reinitz took to Twitter to say that the pending refund process is an example of the USPTO asking applicants to “jump through more hoops”.
He said that the USPTO should suspend all paper surcharges for applications filed from August 15 until the systems are restored, instead of requiring applicants to follow an unspecified process to obtain a refund.
All updates on what this process will be, as well as the status of the PALM maintenance, are available here.
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