If you sell into the US but live somewhere else, something changed this summer that has not been widely reported, and it affects anyone who has been handling their own filings.
As of July 20, 2026, applicants domiciled outside the United States are required to be represented by a US-licensed patent practitioner at the USPTO.
Trademarks have worked this way since 2019. Patents now do too.
Who this applies to
This is about where you are domiciled, not where your product is made or sold. If you are an individual living outside the US, or a company whose principal place of business is outside the US, this is you. Plenty of successful Amazon sellers fall into that category without ever thinking of themselves as foreign filers, because their customers, their marketplace and their revenue are all American.
What it covers
The scope is broad, and this is the part that catches people out. It is not limited to full utility applications. It reaches new filings without regard to whether they are provisional, along with amendments, replies and other papers submitted to the office.
So the common seller workflow, filing a provisional yourself to get a date and deciding later whether to bring in an attorney, no longer works if you are domiciled outside the US. The provisional is covered too.
What this means if you have been filing yourself
If you are outside the US and have been using a do-it-yourself service or filing directly, that route is closed to you now. It is not a matter of whether it is advisable. It is a requirement.
If you have something pending that was filed without US representation, that is worth looking at sooner rather than later, because anything with a deadline attached is unforgiving about the time you spend working out what to do.
A related warning, and this one matters
There is a second thing worth knowing if you are outside the US and shopping for representation. Cheap filing services that promise US filings are not all what they appear to be. There have been arrangements where a
service uses a US practitioner’s credentials on filings that practitioner never actually reviewed, and the applicants who paid for those filings are usually the ones left dealing with the consequences.
Before you hand anything to a service, confirm the person actually signing your filing is a registered US practitioner, that you can identify them by name, and that they are the one doing the work. A filing that costs a fraction of everyone else’s is usually cheap for a reason.
The practical version
- If you are domiciled outside the US and plan to file anything at the USPTO, you need a US-licensed practitioner on the file.
- This includes provisionals, which is the change most likely to catch a seller off guard.
- If you already have something pending that was filed without representation, look at it now rather than at the deadline.
- If you are using a filing service, confirm who is actually signing.
If you are selling into the US from abroad and you are not sure where this leaves your filings, we can look at what you have on file and what it needs. That is work we do regularly for sellers outside the US. This article is general information, not legal advice.
