Patent Center to Replace USPTO’s EFS-Web and PAIR Systems in Early November

Emily Porter, Executive Director  

The road to Patent Center has been a long, winding road. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been working on Patent Center for the past six years and we have seen many different versions of it, albeit all of them have existed in conjunction with EFS-Web (Electronic Filing System) and PAIR (Patent Application Information Retrieval). The USPTO recently announced that beginning on November 8, 2023, EFS-Web and PAIR will become defunct and will be fully replaced by the new Patent Center system. We want to assure our clients that the legal professionals at Renner Otto are ready for this change.

Our legal support team has attended (and even hosted internally) multiple training events covering the new features, and we have updated our own processes to adapt to the upcoming changes. We are well informed about the known issues currently facing Patent Center and are familiar with the workarounds necessary to will ensure our clients are not negatively affected by the change. We also take care to stay apprised of the resolution timeline for the issues that the USPTO is still addressing.

For our clients, though, the real question is, how will this change affect your representation through Renner Otto? The short answer is that it will not. We will maintain our core practices of meeting deadlines, producing top-notch work product, and ensuring the security of client data.

An important thing to note is that the USPTO will eventually require new nonprovisional 111(a) applications to be filed in DOCX format, otherwise they will be subject to a “non-DOCX” surcharge. This is currently on track to take effect beginning January 17, 2024. While we have seen this deadline extended many times, we have remained prepared for the imposition of the surcharge and will guide our clients in avoiding it, where applicable.

Renner Otto is more than a century old and has seen many changes in the way patents and trademarks are prosecuted before the USPTO. Our ability to stay on top of each new change and adapt our procedures to best serve our clients’ needs has helped us to remain one of the top 100 Intellectual Property law firms in patent allowance.

You can learn more about the transition at the USPTO’s website, or feel free to reach out to me at eporter@rennerotto.com.