USPTO Public PAIR is Retiring: What Do Patent Professionals Need To Know?

Whilst not surprising to many, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that the Public Patent Application Information Retrieval (Public PAIR) tool would be retired on 31^st July 2022. It will be succeeded by Patent Center for electronic patent application filing and management. 

The sunsetting of Public PAIR has evoked mixed feelings in the patent community; some cite it as being a trusted partner throughout their career, whilst others cite memories of “heavy load errors” and “inability to recognize genuine patent numbers if typed in too fast”. Whatever your take on it be, the Public PAIR service will be missed. 

When the Public PAIR is finally retired, patent prosecutors will not be left in the lurch as Patent Center, which has been touted by the USPTO as the “Next Generation” patent filing/retrieval and account management system be replacing all the services offered by Public PAIR. The USPTO says that Patent Center enhances the user experience by incorporating filing, application and customer self-administration management within a single user interface. 

As a customer-centric organization and a partner to the USPTO, we have been preparing for the day when the USPTO takes down the Public PAIR for some time and not only does the use of LexisNexis PatentAdvisor^® and LexisNexis^® PAIR Watch remain unaffected, but we also see this as an opportunity for the current and next generation of patent professionals to embrace Patent Center optimized tools such as PatentAdvisor and benefit from: 

• Timely and relevant data imported from Patent Center, increasing reliability, and mitigating delays.
• More informed decision making based on reliable patent application status timeline, examiner allowance rate, average time and the number of office actions to allowance with QuickPAIR, which has been optimized to work with the Patent Center.

• Enhanced workflow optimization leveraging high-quality Art Unit and Examiner statistics right where they are needed on the USPTO Patent Center and Private PAIR websites via the complimentary PatentAdvisor™ Extension.

We are delighted to play a part in the evolution of the patent professional through this transition and continue to build momentum on protecting innovation. Our curated insights help patent professionals make effective decisions, benchmark prosecution performance and support them in becoming strategic business partners. Check out our solutions for the modern-day patent prosecutor to avoid falling behind. 

For more information from the USPTO about the retirement of Public PAIR, please click here: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/public-pair-be-retired 

If you have any questions or are interested in finding out how our suite of solutions can be a jetpack to your prosecution performance, please contact us here: https://staging.lexisnexisip.com/contact-us/#contact-form