The Basics of Patent Office Deadlines
There are some tricky situations that come up with patent office deadlines, and they have to do with time zones—but let’s go over the basics first.
Often when you get a rejection from the patent office for your patent application, you’ll see a notice that says you have 3 months to respond if you don’t want to pay an extra fee, and 6 months if you’re willing to pay extension fees.
Sounds easy enough, but what you think of as 6 months and what the patent office thinks of as 6 months aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Let’s take a basic situation. You get a patent rejection dated June 15th. When do you have to respond? Can you respond on December 15th, or do you have to respond by December 14th? Make your mental guess. Going once, going twice…
The answer is December 15th. You get that full day that marks the 6-month mark, so you might even get one more day than you thought. And you have at least 6 months.
If December 15th lands on a Saturday or Sunday, then you can file your response on the next Monday and it still counts. Also, if that final date lands on a federal holiday in the District of Columbia, you can file on the next business day. So if the six-month period ends on a Saturday, and Monday is a federal holiday, then you can file on Tuesday.
Time Zone Pitfalls: East Coast Time Rules
Now here’s where things get tricky.
Let’s say you live in Los Angeles. It’s December 15th at 10:00 p.m.—and December 15th is the last day to file your response. Does that count as filing it on time?
Make your mental guess… Going once, going twice…
The answer is No, it doesn’t count. You missed the deadline because it’s already December 16th at 1:00 a.m. in Washington, D.C. So you missed the cutoff.
If you’re on the West Coast, think of 9:00 p.m. local time as the effective deadline for electronically submitting your response on that final day.
What If You Use the Post Office?
Next tricky situation: It’s 10:00 p.m. on December 15th. You run to a 24-hour post office and get a date stamp of December 15th on your mailing. Does that count as filing it on time?
Make your mental guess… Going once, going twice…
And the answer is every lawyer’s favorite: It depends. The patent office will accept the date stamp only if the mailing is done via Priority Mail Express.
If you use Priority Mail Express and get the December 15th date stamp, that counts as filing it on time. If you use any other method—like First Class Mail, FedEx, or UPS—the date that counts is the date the patent office receives it, not the date you mailed it.
Nowadays, most filings are electronic, but back in the day, I would hear stories about attorneys driving to the post office at 11:30 p.m. to get that final-day postmark. Even with electronic filing, I’ve heard stories of people missing the 9:00 p.m. Pacific time cutoff and having to drive to the 24-hour post office at LAX. I don’t even know if that exists anymore!
Real-World Filing Emergency
There was a situation I was involved in a long time ago where someone on the East Coast needed something filed with the patent office at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, but their law firm had already closed for the day. They started calling law firms on the West Coast, where it was only 4:00 p.m., and were able to find a firm to handle the emergency filing in time.
International Application Deadline Twist
Okay, last tricky situation.
You have an international patent application with only U.S. inventors, and they all live on the West Coast. There’s a deadline of December 15th to file a response. What is the latest time you can electronically file that response?
Mentally come up with your answer… Going once, going twice…
And the answer is: 9:00 p.m., or maybe 3:00 p.m., or 4:00 p.m.—it was a trick question.
Why all the confusion? Normally, 9:00 p.m. Pacific makes sense because of the 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time deadline. But in some international applications, actions are taken not at the USPTO, but at the International Bureau, which is located in Switzerland—Central European Time.
Switzerland is typically 9 hours ahead of Pacific Time. So 3:00 p.m. Pacific is midnight in Switzerland.
Here’s where it gets super tricky. Both the U.S. and Switzerland observe Daylight Saving Time, but the start and end dates are different. The U.S. generally stays on daylight time longer. So, in early March and in late October/early November, the time difference is only 8 hours, not 9. That means you can file by 4:00 p.m. Pacific on those days.
From what I can find, there’s no time of the year when Switzerland is on daylight saving time and the U.S. isn’t, so we don’t get a 10-hour time difference—but that could change if either country adjusts its daylight saving policies in the future.
I’m guessing none of you got that right, and that’s okay—that’s why you hire a patent attorney. Let us worry about those weird time zone rules.
My Rule of Thumb
In reviewing all these scenarios, I hope you’ve learned one major lesson: Don’t file things on the last day they can be filed.
My personal rule is to treat the deadline as the day before the actual legal deadline. That way, you don’t have to deal with time zone confusion or last-minute emergencies—like internet outages, power failures, or even car accidents on the way to your office.
Missing a deadline by even one minute can cause your patent application to go abandoned, and reviving it can be costly. So, be safe and file a full day early whenever possible.
I’m Adam Diament—and keep on inventing!