We have been hearing from a handful of frustrated clients over the past couple of weeks over how long it is taking for them to receive their Official Letters Patent grants from the USPTO following Issue Fee payment. Our team investigated right away.

In years past, we have told our clients to expect their Official Letters Patent grants 6-8 weeks from Issue Fee payment. This changed for the better last year, as effective May 13, 2025, the USPTO accelerated the time between Issue Notification and Issue Date, from averaged around three weeks to approximately two weeks. Ever since, we have taken the USPTO’s direction and advised our clients that they should receive their patent grants 4-6 weeks after issue fee payment.

Imagine our surprise, then, once we started investigating and realized many of our current issue fee payments are at least eight weeks old or longer. This set off a round of calls to the USPTO’s Applications Assistance Unit. During our first several calls, we were told there is a slight backlog of letters patent grants, but not bad enough to cause the delays we have been noticing. So, we had several files flagged and tickets opened, with instructions to call back the following week if we did not see any new activity.

The good news? We received Issue Notifications the following week for two of the delayed applications. The bad news? It was only two out of many more applications. So, back to the Applications Assistance Unit we went…at which point, the messaging changed.

Apparently, as of the past week, the Application Assistance Unit is now being informed that applications are currently taking four (4) months from payment of the Issue Fee to patent grant. This is an approximately 200-300% increase in processing time! No reason was provided; this was being viewed as something not considered overly impactful. This answer has left us, and our clients, at a bit of a loss.

Why does this matter? After all, the clients have paid their issue fees and know their patents are coming, so what’s the issue with a “short” delay? Unfortunately, this delay can have real world impacts. In one case, our client is anxiously waiting to receive their Patent Number so they can commence enforcement activities ASAP. Any delay in receiving the patent grant, which leads to delays in such enforcement activities, has a clear negative impact on our client’s ability to remove infringing products from the marketplace. The longer these infringing products are sold, the harder it becomes to erase their negative impact on the minds of consumers, protect market share, and more.

For other clients, the additional time to receive patent grants may push patents which should have issued in 2026 into 2027, or likewise disrupt other established business timelines, which may impact negotiations, contracts, rankings, and other metrics important to our clients.

Where does this leave us now? For one thing, we are making it clear that our standing expectation for how long it takes to receive a patent grant must be reset, at least for the time being, to reflect the current temperamentality of the USPTO. We are also updating our timelines for overall prosecution pendency to reflect this new reality.

Stay tuned for the next edition of, “What has the USPTO done now?” Until then, I remain available to discuss how these changes may impact you and your business.

–  Joshua B. Goldberg, Co-Managing Partner

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