USPTO PIER Program: Due to a shipping delay, can we cancel your order and not refund your money?

You’d be surprised to get that note from an online retailer, but it’s the deal the USPTO is offering with its new PIER (“PCT Informed Examination Request”) program, which just went live on May 21, 2026.

For some U.S. patent applications that are based on international (PCT) applications, the USPTO will send the patent applicant a PIER Notice to ask whether they want to abandon their application or not. Does the applicant get a refund if they abandon? No. Why would an applicant ever agree to this? It will be pretty rare. This is an effort to reduce the USPTO backlog, so the PIER Notices will target applications in technology areas with longer backlogs.

But we can’t just ignore the PIER Notice: if the USPTO doesn’t get a response to the PIER Notice, it chooses abandonment for you! Other than abandon or not, there is a third option: delaying prosecution by 12 months. This would make sense for an applicant that wants to defer the expenses of prosecution, but it delays the start of protection of any resulting patent — and it may cut off the end of protection (by reducing patent term adjustment).

If you’re a client, we will discuss your options if we receive a PIER Notice in one of your applications. And we probably won’t recommend voluntarily abandoning.

Questions? Contact the author, Michael Nye or a member of our Intellectual Property team.