The US Patent & Trademark Office website has been experiencing outages in the last two days.

Throughout much of Wednesday, the “private PAIR” system, which allows customers to view the status and file histories of applications, was inaccessible. Additionally, it was not possible for much of the day to file a new patent application or other documents electronically. As of today, the PAIR system has been “hanging”. It appears that the EFS (electronic filing system) is functional though I have not used it.

Undoubtedly, some filers will have missed important filing deadlines because of these outages.

While EFS filing is easy and the most popular way to file an application, it is also possible to “paper file” via U.S. Postal Service Express Mail.

However, when the Post Office closes — guess what?

Deadline missed.