If you have ever conducted any online business with the USPTO, then you have probably received the USPTO’s notice by e-mail. For those who have not, the USPTO recently announced that its Legacy Private PAIR system will be retired on December 31, 2007. Legacy Private PAIR, the predecessor to Portal Private PAIR, includes a number of components (like authentication software) which are no longer supported by their respective vendors, and the operating system it is based upon cannot be upgraded without re-hosting the entire system. As such, and so that the USPTO does not risk a potential failure of Certification and Accreditation as required by Appendix III of OMB Circular A-130, Legacy Private PAIR will be retired at the end of 2007 with Portal Private PAIR continuing to be the main system for applicants to conduct patent business with the USPTO. According to the USPTO, Portal Private PAIR offers XML data downloads, noting that “[a]n XML file may be downloaded containing an extensive list of bibliographic data for single applications; users can obtain a list of applications with status changes; and a list of outgoing correspondence and reference documents is also available. Each of the XML download files has W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) schema files available for download from the USPTO.”

USPTO Announcement: LINK
USPTO Private PAIR FAQ Webpage: LINK