The Quarterly Patent Docketing Audit

A periodic check that the docket reflects reality, rather than a check of what the docket already contains. Daily docketing verifies entries that exist. An audit looks for the obligation that never became an entry, and therefore never produced a reminder. An asset nobody added, an office action that arrived and was actioned but never docketed, an annuity both you and outside counsel assumed the other was paying.

Once a quarter, at varying depth. Run all four checks in full in the first quarter to set a baseline, then rotate: Coverage and Entry integrity in the second quarter, Annuity ownership in the third, and the Continuity walkthrough in the fourth. A team of one or two can sustain that. A full four-check pass every quarter usually gets skipped by the third one.

Three times in a patent’s life, measured from its issue date rather than from a filing date or a common annual date: at 3 to 3.5 years, 7 to 7.5 years, and 11 to 11.5 years. Because each window runs from that patent’s own issue date, due dates spread across the calendar one patent at a time, which is why they cannot be handled as a single annual task.

There is a six-month grace period after each window in which you can still pay, with a surcharge of $540 for a large entity, $216 small, and $108 micro. Past the grace period the patent lapses. Reviving it requires a petition for delayed payment, which is granted on a showing about the delay rather than automatically. That is fee code 1558 at $2,260 large, $904 small, $452 micro if the delay is a year or less, and fee code 1560 at $3,000, $1,200, and $600 beyond a year.

Whoever it is, the point is that it is written down and confirmed. Fees get paid by you, by outside counsel, or by an annuity service, and the failure mode is not that nobody can pay. It is a handoff where two parties remember the arrangement differently. Get each named payer to confirm in writing once a year, and pay particular attention to any asset that changed hands since the last audit.

Whether the docket survives your absence. Name who covers it if you are out for six weeks and write that name where your manager can find it. Confirm that person can locate the docket, the credentials, and the pending response list without calling you. Once a year, walk them through one live matter end to end. If any of it lives only in your head or your inbox, it is not continuity.