Deadline for Filing Certain Patent-Related Documents and Fees Extended a Third Time to July 1, 2020

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In a Notice dated June 29. 2020, the USPTO, under the CARES Act authority and its existing authority,  has extended from July 1, 2020, to September 30, 2020, the time for small and micro entities to pay certain patent-related fees that would otherwise have been due on or after March 27, 2020. The small and micro entity fees eligible are basic filing fees, issue fees, maintenance fees, and other fees as set forth in the June 29 notice. In addition to this extension, and although some of the other relief provided in past notices is ending, other extensions of time and other relief remain available to those who need it on a case-by-case basis.

Fees for filing petitions for application revival must be accompanied by a statement that the delay in filing or payment was due to the COVID-19 outbreak and must be filed by July 31, 2020, to be eligible for fee waiver.  Further extensions are not contemplated.

(Originally published 5/29/2020) The US Patent and Trademark Office has extended a third time, now to July 1, 2020, the deadline for filing certain patent-related documents and fees, but not the deadline for trademark documents and fees, which remains May 31. This additional extension does not apply to applicants that are large entities, only to “small” and “micro” entities, as defined at https://www.uspto.gov/patents-application-process/applying-online/entity-status-fee-purposes. The initial extension, issued on March 16, 2020, ran only until April 30th. The second extension ran to May 31, 2020.

For small and micro entity applicants with patent documents and fees to file by June 1, 2020, those documents and fees will be deemed to be timely filed if filed by July 1, 2020. 

For entities that are not small entities or micro entities, relief is still available but on a case-by-case basis on filing a petition for an extension or a petition to revive.

The request for an extension, however, must include a statement that the delay in filing or making payment was due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Specifically, the requester must identify that a practitioner, applicant, registrant, or other person associated with the filing or fee was personally affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, for example, through office closures, cash flow interruptions, inaccessibility of files, or other materials, travel delays, personal or family illness, or similar circumstances, so that the outbreak materially interfered with timely filing or payment.

Current petition procedures for requesting extensions to revive an abandoned application or reinstate a cancelled/expired registration (pursuant to 37 CFR subsections 2.66 and 2.46) may be used for COVID-19 extension requests. However, for COVID-19 requests, the fees for the petitions are waived.

For Patents, the types of deadlines for which the relief is to be granted are found at:

https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Patents%20CARES%20Act.pdf

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