Today (Christmas Day, December 25, 2025) the USPTO for the first time emailed outgoing correspondence notifications (OCNs, shown at right) for three pieces of outgoing patent correspondence that have been backdated to December 23, 2025.
The “Documents” tab in Patent Center (quoted at right) correctly states that the “Email Notification” did not happen until December 25, 2025 but falsely states a purported “Mail room date” for the document (an Issue Notification) of December 23, 2025.
The items of correspondence were not visible in Patent Center on the purported date of mailing of Tuesday, December 23, 2025.
The items of correspondence were not visible in Patent Center even a day later, on Wednesday, December 24, 2025.
Today, Thursday, December 25, 2025 (Christmas Day) is the first date that the items of correspondence have become visible in Patent Center.
Each of these three items of correspondence is an Issue Notification. For each of the three involved patent applications, the Transaction History states (falsely, seen at right) that the Issue Notification was mailed on Tuesday, December 23, 2025. For each application the Transaction History does truthfully state the date of the Email Notification to be December 25, 2025.
For each item of correspondence, the purported “mailing date” is December 23, and the purported “image date” (see at right) is December 24. I note that the “image date” of December 24 is a telltale that the purported “mailing date” is false. If the image did not exist until December 24, then it is impossible for the thing that was “imaged” on December 24 to have been “mailed” the previous day. But even the “image date” of December 24 was not accurate. The first date upon which it was possible to see this document in Patent Center was December 25.
It seems disingenuous, to put it politely, for the USPTO to pretend that it mailed a document on December 23 when the truth is that the USPTO did not make it visible in any way to the customer until two days later, on December 25.
I suppose a person might suggest that lying about what date an Issue Notification really got mailed is not likely to cause serious harm to the customer. And this might be so, for this particular type of correspondence. But there are many other kinds of outgoing patent correspondence for which a backdated and false date of mailing could indeed cause serious harm to a customer.
Just to give one example, consider an Advisory Action that is subject to the “two-month rule”. With such an Advisory Action, if the filer were to file an RCE or Notice of Appeal on the date of mailing of the Advisory Action, no extension of time would need to be purchased.
But if the USPTO were to lie about the date of mailing, backdating the purported date of mailing to some false date in the past, then I expect that the USPTO would say that an RCE or Notice of Appeal filed on the actual date of mailing (without an extension of time) was untimely. The application would go abandoned.
This is not the first time that I have seen the the USPTO backdate a piece of outgoing patent correspondence. I have seen this several times in recent months. Several times the false (backdated) date of mailing was one day in the past compared with the true date of mailing.
I am posting about this today because (a) the true date of mailing was Christmas Day, and (b) the number of days of false backdating was two days rather than just one day, and (c) the backdating happened in not one, not two, but three separate patent applications.
I am at a loss to think how to get the USPTO to stop this backdating.
I’ve encountered backdating too. Has it actually affected anything I’ve worked on? No. But WE’RE not allow to lie about when we submitted papers; why should the USPTO be allowed to do so (apart from the PTO’s own legal obligations)? I note that the backdating problem precedes the current administration so it seems to a bipartisan thing.
I suspect the way this would get dealt with is either (a) someone in the patent prosecution business is friendly with the Commissioner or someone to whom the Commissioner reports, or (b) someone who has money to burn sees backdated correspondence in one of his patent applications and can document the backdating (e.g. has screenshots from the relevant dates), deliberately files the response on the actual deadline and not the fictitious earlier deadline, then sues the PTO when the PTO tells him the application is abandoned for late filing of the response without an extension fee.