When a patent is in force, the owner has a monopoly on who can make and sell the underlying invention (or at least what’s covered in the claims). So determining whether or not a patent is in force can often be a million dollar question.
Patents can be expired for several reasons: age of the patent, failure to pay maintenance fees, or invalidation. The problem is that the Patent Office doesn’t have any simple way of indicating whether or not a patent is in force. They don’t just put a big “EXPIRED” stamp on patents. So here are some guidelines and places to look for expiration information.
What is the time frame of the patent protection?
The calculation of patent lifespans was changed in 1995. Here’s the breakdown:
- If the patent is issued before June 8, 1995, then the patent expires 17 years after the issue date.
- If the patent application was pending on June 8, 1995, then the term is the longer of 17 years after issue or 20 years after filing + any patent office granted extensions.
- If the patent application was filed after June 8, 1995, then the term is 20 years after filing.
Term Adjustments
A patent can have its term adjusted if the pending period was overly long. Typically, these patents will have an * by the patent number on the cover page, and the length of the term adjustment will be one of the items listed on the cover.
Conversely, a patent can have its term shortened if it claims back to an earlier priority document.
Checking Public PAIR & Patent Maintenance Fee Pages
The records for all recent patents can be found in the USPTO Patent Application Information Retrieval system (PAIR). Here you can see if a patent is abandoned due non-payment.
If you want to be thorough, you can easily jump from the PAIR entry over to the USPTO Fee Payment Center and get the status of fee payments. Again, the status will indicate if the owners are paying the maintenance fees or if they have let the patent go.
Comments on this entry are closed.