UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - US
Jurisdiction - General Information
The United States of America has been a Contracting Party to the Paris Convention for the Protection ofIndustrial Property since May 30, 1887. It has also been a Contracting Party to the Patent Cooperation
Treaty (PCT) since January 24, 1978. In addition, it is a party to the Budapest Treaty on the International
Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure and the Patent Law
Treaty (PLT).
More legal information about intellectual property-related laws and regulations of the United States ofAmerica can be found on WIPO Lex.

Online Patent Register and Online Gazette
The United States of America have an Online Register. They also have an Online Gazette (“OfficialGazette for Patents”).

Features and search functionalities
The Online Register (Patent Center) has an English interface.
Through the Online Register you can retrieve information on PCT National Phase Entry, Fee Payment,
Legal Status, Patent Term Extension, and access the Dossier/File Wrapper Information and the FullPublications.
The Online Register can also be searched by US application, publication or patent number or PCT
Application Number.
Through a separate US patents database accessible at this link (Basic search) or at this link (Advancedsearch), it is possible to carry out additional searches by Applicant/Inventor Name, Priority Data andother search terms.
The Online Gazette for patents is published weekly on Tuesdays in English and provides drawings andbibliographic data for each newly issued patent. It is searchable by date or number. The coverage is from1995 to present. Previous editions since 1964 can be accessed at this link.

Additional Information
Particularities of patent protection in the United States of America
The current term is 20 years from filing, adjustable in case of delay in the procedure according to thePatent Term Adjustment rules (Act of 1999), but a few patents granted under the previous law (term: 17years from grant) could be still alive. A Patent Term Calculator (last update April 4, 2018) is available atthis link.

Designs in the US are also considered as ‘Patents’ and searchable in the same databases.
Protection through Patent Term Extension Certificate is available. This link leads to an unofficial list ofpatents having received patent term extensions.
US applications are filed by the inventor; assignment to a company can follow later. When the USPTO
receives relevant information for its assignment database, the USPTO puts the information in the publicrecord and does not verify the validity of the information. Patent assignment recordal is not mandatory
in the US, moreover, the USPTO neither makes a determination of the legality of the transaction nor theright of the submitting party to take the action. The USPTO maintains a searchable database at this linkthat contains all recorded Patent Assignment information from August 1980 to the present.

Search tips
An example of PCT Application Number is, e.g., "PCT Number" PCT/EP05/12345.
To access Dossier/File Wrapper Information, open the tab "Documents & transaction" in the patent
record.
A tab addressing to the “Global dossier” of the IP5 group (the dossiers published by the European Patent
Office (EPO), Japan Patent Office (JPO), Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), and the National
Intellectual Property Administration, PRC (CNIPA) and the United States of America (USPTO) is alsoavailable in the patent record. Dossiers of additional IP Offices can be accessed through a link to theWIPO CASE service.
To check the possible Patent Term Extensions (e.g. for patent 6,740,669) or Patent Term Adjustment(e.g. for patent 8,740,669) click on the corresponding tab of the patent record.