Bottom line: Patent royalties based on activities after a licensed patent has expired is per se unlawful. Kimble v. Marvel (S. Ct. 2015). This rule is effective even if the parties did not know about the rule when they entered into the license agreement.Clients will often ask during the last days of a successful patent term how one might go about extending the patent … [Read more...]
Patent term
Patent term is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest non-provisional patent application with any patent term adjustments.
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Extend patent protection and receive more royalties
Bottom line: By filing a string of continuing patent applications and not claiming priority for the continuing patent applications back to a common parent application, the patent owner may be able to extend patent protection for its product.Under U.S. patent laws, an inventor can file a series of successive child patent applications. This is commonly referred to as … [Read more...]
Patent term extension granted for some applications filed with RCE
Based on Novartis v. Lee (Fed. Cir. 2014), if patent prosecution lasted more than 3 years and you filed a request for continued examination, you should investigate whether you are due a patent term extension and file any request for correction within 180 days of patent issuance. 1. History In 1994, Congress changed the method of measuring the effective term of a patent to … [Read more...]
Factors in deciding whether a patent is still enforceable
The stock answer is that a patent is enforceable for 20 years upon filing. However, this is not the complete picture. First off, the patent term doesn’t start until grant of the patent which may be anywhere from a few months for design patent and a couple of years for a utility patent. The patent term is dependent upon the following factors: 1. Was the first filed patent … [Read more...]
What is the term of a patent?
The general rule is that the term of a patent is 20 years upon filing or 17 years upon issuance depending on the date that it was filed and whether it was enforceable on June 8, 1995. The term may be adjusted to account for delays caused by the Applicant or the Patent Office. If the patent is the second patent in a family of patents, then the patent term is calculated from the … [Read more...]
Adjusting Patent Term Due to Delays
Generally, the basic term of a patent is either 20 years from the filing date of the patent application or 17 years from the issue date of the patent whichever is greater. However, there are many variations from the basic term. For example, the patent term for a continuation patent is calculated not from its own filing date but the filing date of its parent application. … [Read more...]