Today is Monday, January 11. As of today there are still many patent applications which applicants filed on Tuesday, January 5, that are lost within the USPTO. They cannot be viewed in PAIR. I reported this problem on January 8.
It is puzzling that this loss of newly filed patent applications is not mentioned at the USPTO Systems Status and Availability page.
We filed ten new US patent applications that day. And we entered the US national phase in one case on that day. And we cannot see any of those filings in PAIR. USPTO’s internal standard is that a newly filed document should be visible in PAIR within one hour.
We reported these lost patent applications to the EBC, and this is what we heard back from the EBC:
Thank you for contacting the Electronic Business Center regarding this matter. We are currently experiencing issues with applications that were filed on 1/5/2016 not loading into the system properly which caused issues with paying fees and users are experiencing issues with trying to log back into the system to pay fees later or bringing the application up in Private Pair to view. The USPTO is aware of the matter and are currently working to resolve those issues. We apologize for the inconveniences.
We have seen many, many cases where it took longer than it should have taken for something filed in EFS-Web to become visible in PAIR. But this delay of six days is unprecedented.
I was told by the EBC last week that this problem affects filings submitted on other days as well, and is not limited to new applications. I submitted an ADS on January 7 and it is still not visible in PAIR.