US patent applications are published in the USPTO Gazette 18 months from the filing date of the patent application. Thus, even though a patent has not yet been granted on a patent application, the latter becomes available for public inspection a year and a half from the date the patent application was filed.

Finally, once the original or amended claims of a patent application have been approved by the examiner, the patent is granted and the specific date of grant is called the “issue” or “grant” date (also called “day of patent”). Thus, there would be effectively two publication dates for recent US patents: (a) publication date arising from the now required 18-months-from-filing publication date and (b) the publication date corresponding to the issue date.