Our office e-filed a dozen patent applications at the USPTO on January 5, 2016. Today is January 8 and even now, not one of these patent applications is visible in PAIR.
What we have heard from the Electronic Business Center is that this is a known problem. Other filers who filed patent applications on January 5 have likewise been unable to see the applications in PAIR.
Let’s hope that the USPTO gets this problem straightened out soon.
This sort of problem at the USPTO is yet another reason to file a new PCT application in the RO/IB rather than RO/US. Newly filed PCT applications at RO/IB (if filed electronically using an ePCT eOwnership code) are visible in ePCT instantly.
As a reminder, a US-based would-be filer in RO/IB needs to make sure that either (a) the invention was not made in the US, or (b) a Foreign Filing License has already been obtained, perhaps through the priority document.
In light of all your posts about the most recent USPTO outage, I have been waiting to see what you would say about this issue. Before I e-filed my US patent application on 5 January, I checked the PTO website to see if there were any notices about system outages since my deadline to file was several weeks away and I could have waited. There were no notices, so I filed it, wrote down my serial no., and entered my credit card info, then waited for my electronic filing receipt. It never came, and the system timed out without issuing a filing receipt or confirmation of payment. When I asked why there was no notice of any issues on the website, one of several customer service reps who answered my frequent calls about my missing application told me there was no notice because of all the people who have to sign off on notices in order for them to get posted on the PTO website. I was told to fax a Fee Transmittal and PTO-2038 to pay fees, which I did. I could only access the efiling acknowledgment in My Workplace the next day. My application is still not available in PAIR.
We had a similar instance, however, the submission finally made its way to the IFW several days later.