{"id":60185,"date":"2015-08-03T06:30:02","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T10:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/?p=60185"},"modified":"2015-08-14T10:24:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-14T14:24:00","slug":"the-myth-of-the-18-month-delay-in-publishing-patent-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/2015\/08\/03\/the-myth-of-the-18-month-delay-in-publishing-patent-applications\/id=60185\/","title":{"rendered":"The Myth of the 18-Month Delay in Publishing Patent Applications"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fact-myth-steet<\/a>Starting in November 2000, the USPTO started publishing patent applications<\/a> 18 months after their earliest filing date. So the simple assumption is that you file a patent and 18 months later it get publicized, right? Well, things aren\u2019t that straightforward.<\/p>\n

First of all, the \u201cearliest filing date\u201d really means the priority date since the US moved to a first-to-file system, so it\u2019s really 18 months after the earliest priority date (including foreign filings). Also, the patent application can be filed up to 12 months after the invention is first sold into the market or otherwise disclosed (which becomes the priority date), so an application that take advantage of the 12-month grace period could be published as early as 6 months after filing.<\/p>\n

There are also lots of exceptions to the 18-month rule<\/a>: A filer can request early publication (because in some cases you can now claim pre-issue royalties if the patent is granted); the filer can elect to not file for foreign patents and request non-publication at the time of filing to prevent the filing from being published in the US; provisional applications are not published and remain secret; continuation-in-part and divisional applications based on years-old patent applications can be published within a few weeks of filing; the patent filer can request non-publication or the government can prevent publication due to national security reasons; etc.<\/p>\n

In practice, the graph below shows that over half of US patent applications are published within a year after they were filed<\/strong>. The analysis below is based on the patents published in June 2015, based on how many months passed between when they were filed and when they were published:<\/p>\n

\"June<\/a><\/p>\n

There are several \u201cspikes\u201d in the data:<\/p>\n