A USPTO patent examiner may take action in your application with any of various official letters. Below we describe each type of letter and how to respond. These letters require careful reading in order to understand the response deadlines and requirements.
Types of official letters
Office Action - written correspondence from the patent examiner requiring a properly signed written response from you in order for prosecution of your application to continue. Examples include a restriction requirement, a non-final office action, and a final office action. Your reply must address each ground of rejection and objection the examiner has made.
Notice of Allowability - a USPTO form (PTOL-37) is mailed to you if the patent examiner determines that all pending claims in the application are allowable (eligible to receive a patent). The notice not only identifies the allowable claims, but also the required fees to be paid before a patent is issued.
The examiner may mail another type of notice identifying any deficiencies in the application or your correspondence. You usually have two months to correct the deficiency unless the notice accompanies an office action. An example of such a notice is a Notice of Non-Compliant Amendment. (For a Notice to File Missing Parts or a Notice of Incomplete Application, learn more about how to respond on our webpage covering applications that are incomplete or missing information.)
Response deadlines
By law, most replies to office actions (official letters) must be received within six months from the date the office action was mailed. Office actions almost always shorten the time period within which you can file a response without paying an extension-of-time fee. The shortened period is typically either two or three months, depending on the type of office action, with different response periods in certain circumstances. There are no extensions to the six-month legal reply window other than for notices without such a limit. If you do not submit an acceptable, timely response to an office action or other official letter, your application will be abandoned.
How to respond to official letters
The USPTO conducts business in writing. Submit replies to office actions and other official letters in any of these ways:
- Online via the USPTO's Patent Center (Registered eFilers only)
- Postal mail
- Faxed to the official USPTO fax number: 571-273-8300
- Hand-carried to the USPTO customer service window in Alexandria, Virginia
Electronic responses submitted in Patent Center (registered eFilers only) receive an Eastern Time stamp. Any submission arriving by 11:59 p.m. ET will be granted that day's filing date (regardless of "normal" USPTO business hours). Postal-mailed responses with sufficient postage, sent as first-class mail and deposited with the United States Postal Service will receive the benefit of the date of deposit for timeliness purposes if accompanied by a signed, completed certificate of mailing. Similarly, responses faxed to the official USPTO fax number will be credited with the date of transmission if a signed, completed certificate of transmission accompanies it. More information about these certificates can be found at the appropriate webpage. You should keep a copy of the response with the signed certificate in case the response is lost or not received by the USPTO.
Responses mailed to the USPTO from outside the United States or hand-carried to the customer service window will be credited with the actual date they are received.