E-Mail with Direct Link to Issued Trademark Office Actions and Appeal Briefs Replaces E-Mailed Office Actions/Appeal Briefs

The USPTO is aware of the concern with the USPTO’s new e-mail notification with a TDR link to the Office action or brief, specifically with the objection to any delay in the availability of the Office action or brief in TDR. While the TDR link within a notification is generally available within 15 minutes or less of the notification being issued, it may occasionally take up to 24 hours for the link to work. Thus, in the vast majority of cases, the USPTO expects that the link would be available when the e-mail recipient first attempts to access it. However, given the inconvenience that any delay may cause, the USPTO continues to work toward refining this new procedure, so that the e-mail notification and availability of the link are synchronized.

Nonetheless, regardless of the brief delay in availability under the current procedure, the e-mail notification procedure is still vastly superior to paper mail, where the time between mailing and receipt of an Office action or brief can be three to five business days. The new procedure also improves upon the previous method of sending the Office action or brief within the actual e-mail itself, because applicants no longer have to track multiple e-mails for Office actions or briefs containing large amounts of evidence, or run the risk of not receiving all such e-mails.