USPTO to Further Expedite U.S. Patent Issuance

Effective May 13, 2025, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will reduce the time between the mailing of an Issue Notification and the Issue Date of a US patent to approximately two weeks.

Typically, upon allowance of a patent application, a patent applicant receives a Notice of Allowance setting a 3-month deadline (with no extensions of time available) to pay an Issue Fee to proceed to patent grant. Following payment of the Issue Fee, the USPTO mails an Issue Notification notifying the applicant of the exact date of issue of the subject patent (US patents always issue on a Tuesday).

This shortening of time to patent issuance has been made possible by the USPTO’s move to electronic grants (eGrants) (first introduced in April 2023). An eGrant is an official electronic version of a granted U.S. patent, which replaced paper-based versions as the official version. An eGrant is readily accessible by the public through the USPTO’s Patent Center interface and can be downloaded any number of times.

Although there remains time between the payment of the Issue Fee and transmittal of the Issue Notification, and time between the Issue Notification and Issue Date, the total time period time between payment of the Issue Fee and the Issue Date can now be even shorter.

Thus, we recommend that all decisions regarding any continuing applications (divisional, continuation, or continuation-in-part applications) be made by the time the Issue Fee is paid and that any continuing applications be filed before the next Tuesday following payment of the Issue Fee to ensure copendency of the application (of the issuing patent) and any continuing applications.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact a member of Laine IP’s US IP Team. Thank you.