By Donald Zuhn --
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced this morning that it has now restored its fax line and is once again able to receive faxed documents. The announcement was made on the Office's Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Despite the restoration of its fax line, the Office will still consider each day from Tuesday, December 22, 2015, through Thursday, December 24, 2015, to be a "Federal holiday within the District of Columbia" under 35 U.S.C. § 21 and 37 C.F.R. §§ 1.6, 1.7, 1.9, 2.2(d), 2.195, and 2.196. As a result, the Office will consider any action or fee due between December 22 and December 24 as timely if the action is taken, or the fee is paid, on the next succeeding business day on which the USPTO is open (see 37 C.F.R. §§ 1.7(a) and 2.196). According to the Office, actions that are taken or fees that are paid on the next succeeding business day on which the USPTO is open will be considered timely for the purposes of, for example, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1051(b), 1058, 1059, 1062(b), 1063, 1064, and 1126(d), or 35 U.S.C. §§ 119, 120, 133, and 151. Because Friday, December 25 is a Federal holiday, the next succeeding business day would currently be Monday, December 28, 2015 (provided, of course, that the Office can restore its remaining systems by that date). The Office also noted that it would issue a subsequent notice as needed if its systems are not fully operational by Monday, December 28, 2015.
Patent Docs will continue to monitor and report on the USPTO systems shutdown through the holiday weekend.
UPDATED: Some commentators have questioned the Office's authority to consider December 22-24, 2015 to be Federal holidays (see, e.g., Comment 6 in response to Patently-O's coverage of the USPTO power outage and systems shutdown, as well as the comment here).
UPDATED: The comment posted in response to Patently-O's coverage of the USPTO power outage and systems shutdown has now been posted here.
Hey Don,
I've seen several comments, one in particular by someone I respect greatly, that the USPTO may have no authority to declare any day (other than December 25) to be governed by the Holiday rule. Therefore, if you need a filing date certain for application filings and similar matters, you should consider using the 37 CFR 1.10 Express Mail Certification procedure (hard copy) for such filings (I am).
Posted by: EG | December 24, 2015 at 11:51 AM
Don,
December 27, 2015 at 3:01 pm
To all:
It appears that the USPTO’s Private PAIR and EFS systems are now up, at least enough to retrieve documents from Private PAIR and to file applications through the EFS system.
With respect to filing applications through the EFS system, be very careful. It appears you won’t be able to save a proper pdf file of fee-info or the electronic filing receipt. Instead, I recommend printing each of these documents from the screen itself to save a record of such.
You may also have to pdf print (e.g., using PaperPort) or scan your filled in ADS form if you use the latest version (AIA 14, 11-15 version). When I tried to upload the filled ADS form using this latest version, I got both a Warning and Error message. You still get a Warning message if you pdf print or scan the filled ADS form, but at least you can complete the EFS filing.
Hope that helps.
Posted by: EG | December 27, 2015 at 03:02 PM