The Electronic Filing System of the
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alex ...
(USPTO), also referred to as EFS-Web or simply EFS, is a web-based system for submitting
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
applications and related documents electronically.
All users may file new applications for
accelerated examination,
design patents
In the United States, a design patent is a form of legal protection granted to the ornamental design of an article of manufacture. Design patents are a type of industrial design right. Ornamental designs of jewelry, furniture, beverage containers ...
, design patent
reissues,
international applications for filing in the US receiving office,
provisional application
Under United States patent law, a provisional application is a legal document filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), that establishes an early filing date, but does not mature into an issued patent unless the applicant ...
s,
reexamination
In United States patent law, a reexamination is a process whereby anyone—third party or inventor—can have a U.S. patent reexamined by a patent examiner to verify that the subject matter it claims is patentable. To have a patent reexamined, ...
requests,
utility patent
This is a list of legal terms relating to patents. A patent is not a right to practice or use the invention, but a territorial right to exclude others from commercially exploiting the invention, granted to an inventor or his successor in rights i ...
s under 35 U.S.C. § 111(a), utility patent reissues, U.S. National Stage applications under 35 U.S.C. § 371, ASCII text files (for sequence listings, computer listings, mega tables, mathematical formulae, chemical formulae, and 3D protein crystal structures), and petitions under 37 C.F.R. § 1.378(c). Applications must be in
PDF format.
Users who have registered may also file follow-on documents and/or fees for previously filed applications, and pre-grant publications.
After filing via EFS, users are sent an electronic receipt that acknowledges the submission date. Submissions are available for viewing on
Private PAIR within hours of submission.
See also
*
epoline
epoline is a set of web-based computer programs and services enabling applicants, patentees and their representatives to file patent applications online before the European Patent Office (EPO), as well as to monitor the status of patent applicat ...
, a set of web-based computer programs and services operated by the European Patent Office (EPO)
References
EFS-Web help (USPTO)
External links
United States patent law
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