The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recognizes that the COVID-19 outbreak has imposed significant hardships on many of our stakeholders. In particular, some foreign intellectual property (IP) offices are not currently issuing paper certified copies of foreign applications due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
To provide relief to applicants during the outbreak, the USPTO has published an Official Gazette Notice setting forth conditions under which the USPTO will suspend the requirement for filing the certified copy of the foreign application.
“The application must have been filed in a foreign IP office that does not participate in a bilateral or multilateral priority document exchange program with the USPTO that would cover the application and thus permit retrieval through the program,” the USPTO said in a notice.