Patent Law FAQ

In general, status information cannot be provided for unpublished patent applications, unless the requester is:

1. The applicant
2. A patent practitioner of record
3. The assignee or an assignee of an undivided part interest
4. The inventor or a joint inventor
5. A registered attorney or agent named in the application papers

Alternatively, a person with written authority from any of the above parties can be provided status information.

There are some exceptions where status information can be supplied for unpublished applications, such as:

• When the application is identified in a published patent document or another application publication
• When the application is a national stage application or claims benefit to a published international application and the US is a designated state
• When the application is an international design application maintained by the USPTO for national processing