While this is certainly makes the request's intent more clear, I suspect there isn't much gained here over simply POSTing the patch content. Other request methods can be implemented by the HTTP server itself in terms of the filesystem (e.g. PUT "simply" writes the content stream to a local file), but PATCH would require the server itself to have specific knowledge of the patch format and how to apply it in order to be useful. This could be farmed out a plugin or external program, but such a thing could just as easily live as a POST processor in [insert favourite language here] without needing to make any changes to the HTTP server or standards.