Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office sent an e-mail alert reminding practitioners and applicants that the deadline for migrating their deposit accounts and electronic funds transfer accounts (EFTs) is June 30, 2016.  Financial Manager is the Office's new online fee payment management tool, which will allow practitioners and applicants to store and manage different payment methods (e.g., credit or debit cards, deposit accounts, or EFTs) and generate transaction history and monthly statements.  Additional information regarding Financial Manager can be found here.  In order to migrate deposit accounts and EFTs, customers will first need to create a uspto.gov account.

The Office's e-mail alert noted that after June 30, the Office will no longer accept legacy deposit account or EFT credentials for payments, and that customers will instead be required to store deposit accounts and EFTs in Financial Manager.  After the June 30 deadline, customers who have not migrated their deposit accounts and EFTs to Financial Manager will only be able to make payments as a guest using a credit or debit card.

In addition to the Financial Manager webpage, the Office has provided several additional resources regarding Financial Manager.  To migrate accounts to Financial Manager, the Office has provided a Financial Manager Quick Start Guide and Introduction to Payment Method Migration.

In a separate e-mail alert distributed earlier this month, the Office noted that the existing EFS-Web payment process will continue to be available in the short-term to allow customers to transition to the new payment system, but will eventually be phased out.  For information regarding how to pay fees from EFS-Web using a stored payment method through Financial Manager, the Office has provided the EFS-Web Fee Payment Quick Start Guide.  Additional information can also be found here.