The US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) announced that it has shortened the time between the issue notification and the issue date for patents. Historically, the time between these two events averaged about three weeks. Seeking to provide earlier protection for inventions, the PTO intends to reduce that time to about two weeks. The PTO is making the move because publishing electronic grants via the PTO online platform has allowed the PTO to eliminate redundancies and reduce the time between grant notification and the issuance date. The shortened wait time has the added benefit of potentially allowing patent applicants to avoid the Quick Path Information Disclosure Statement (IDS), which attempts to streamline filing an IDS after payment of the issue fee.

Practice Note: Given the accelerated timeline, the PTO recommends that applicants file continuation applications before payment of the issue fee to ensure codependency.