General Rule: U.S. Patent Applications Are Published After 18-Months. Unless a patent applicant files a non-publication request, U.S. patent applications are automatically published after 18-months from their earliest priority date.

What does it mean when a patent application is published?

What Does Publication Mean? When a U.S. patent application is published, the patent application is made publicly available for download (see Sample Published Patent Application) and entire file history for the patent application can be viewed by anyone using Public PAIR.

What day of the week do patent applications publish?

The projected publication date normally will be the later of: (1) eighteen months from the earliest filing date claimed; or (2) fourteen weeks from the mailing date of the filing receipt. The publication process takes about fourteen weeks. Publication occurs on Thursday of each week.