PALM outage information for patent customers

The information on this page refers to an outage of the Patent Application Locating and Monitoring database (PALM) August 15-23, 2018. This impacted multiple United States Patent and Trademark Office systems used for filing and prosecuting patent applications. The issue has been resolved, but customers may continue to have questions about the outage and its impact.

Refund of paper filing fees

A separate webpage has been created with information for completing alternative electronic filing and requesting a refund. This page includes Federal Register Notice 83 FR 44264 detailing the procedure and the required USPTO form to use.