USPTO Notable News ' The USPTO Is Moving To Digital Patent Grants

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Law Firm: JMB Davis Ben-David
• Subject Matter: Intellectual Property, Patent
• Author: Ms Miriam Samis
• Published date: 28 March 2023

The USPTO has recently announced that as of April 18, 2023, it will no longer be issuing paper granted patents. Instead, the USPTO will be transitioning to issuing certified electronic granted patents (eGrants). The eGrant will be the official statutory patent grant and will be available the day the patent is issued, as opposed to the paper patent, which was usually received weeks thereafter due to typical mail delays.

In US patent practice, a continuing patent application (divisional, continuation, or continuation-in-part) can be filed until the day before the allowed patent issues. Whereas in the past we typically received notice of patent issue a few weeks beforehand, thereby providing our clients a relatively long time to make any final continuing application filing decisions, it is currently unclear when we would receive the issue notification in relation to the new...