We have a case in Technology Center 2100 in which we responded to a non-final Office Action on September 15, 2025.
Normally such a response would have gotten forwarded to the Examiner (by the LIE) within two or three business days.
In this case it got forwarded to the Examiner on January 16, 2026. Yes, it took more than four months for the LIE to do the one or two mouse clicks required to place the response onto the desk of the Examiner.
Four months. Not acceptable.
But it gets worse. We have a case in Technology Center 3600 in which we responded to a final Office Action on January 9, 2026. (The date of the final rejection was October 22, 2025.)
This means that the case will go abandoned on April 22, 2026 unless we somehow secure an allowance.
It has been more than a month, and even now the response has not gotten forwarded to the Examiner.
One month. Not acceptable.
On February 6, 2026, I phoned up the Director of the Technology Center about this service failure. I reached his voice mail. I left a detailed voicemail message for him, asking if he could please arrange for our January 9 response to get forwarded to the Examiner.
Four days have passed, during which (a) I have heard nothing back from the Director of the Technology Center, and (b) our response remains untouched by the LIE (has not been forwarded to the Examiner).
Have others being seeing delays this long? Please post a comment below.
I can’t speak to the USPTO, but there are similar and worse delays at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO). It can take 2 months just for an amendment to be entered. Too slow!
I have a case that has a Petition to make special based on age granted on 8/29/24. The status still states waiting on LR clearance from 10/15/24. Has not been sent to an Examiner, yet. I called and was told, “sorry, we just don’t have the staff, but I can assure you that you are no longer in LR clearance.” So now I’m supposed to just accept some verbal status?!? I asked for an email to that effect and was refused. I called ombudsman and they literally laughed.
Was this a case where Patent Center gave an error when you filed the response? I had a case where that happened, and when I checked on it a few weeks later, it still had not been forwarded to the examiner. I wonder if the two are related.
Thank you for commenting. Yours is a very scary thing to think about. As we know, part of what EFS-Web did was to pass a message to the relevant person or department within the USPTO, each time a new document got e-filed. And as we know, Patent Center is supposed to do the same. But as you remind us, sometimes a filer can click “submit” in Patent Center and then it crashes. Hours or days later the submission becomes visible in Patent Center and we relax. But what if, because of the crash, the message-passing failed to happen?
In answer to your specific question, I went back and looked and my “success” email telling the client that we filed the response was close in time to the event being reported, so probably there was not any crash visible to me as the filer.
Along the same lines, I am frustrated with a case granted PPH status on August 10, 2025. As of today, it still remains floating in DOCKET CENTRAL. I have sent two emails to the OMBUDS Office as I don’t have an Examiner assigned to the case. The first response was
I sent a second email to the same office in January 2026 and have not received a response.
I suggested to clients to take certain steps such as PPH petition because I have an understanding that there will be accelerated handling so that we have feedback before having to make national stage country choices for a PCT case. This is not working out as planned.
Can we elevate these backlog/insufficient staff issues within our professional organizations (AIPLA, etc.) and to members of Congress involved with intellectual property matters?
Other avenues to elevate the seriousness of a non-responsive Patent Office when legal deadlines threaten to compromise business owners’ rights in patent properties?
These experiences appear to be common, not unique.