how to check us patent expiry date [Must-Know Tips]

Last updated : Sept 30, 2022

How do you check if a US patent has expired?

1. Do a patent search through the USPTO.
2. Select USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database (PatFT).
3. Select Advanced Search.
4. Input a date range or a specific date and begin the search.
5. Choose the patent you want to research.
6. Copy the patent number.

Is there an expiration date on patents?

The United States Patent and Trademark Office does not calculate expiration dates for patents.

How do I check a US patent status?

A patent application's status is available on the website of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office's website – uspto.gov. The USPTO website offers a page called Public PAIR which allows the general public to view the status of a published application.

How long is US patent valid for?

How Long Do IPR Rights Last? A U.S. utility patent, explained above, is generally granted for 20 years from the date the patent application is filed; however, periodic fees are required to maintain the enforceability of the patent.

Can you renew patent after 20 years?

As per the Indian Patents Act, 1970 a patent is granted on a product, a process, or an invention for a limited period of 20 years. Hence, the life span for a patent in India is 20 years from the date of filing the patent application. You simply cannot extend the life of the patent.

What happens if a patent expires?

After the patent expires, anyone may make, use, offer for sale, sell or import the invention without permission of the patent owner, provided that subject matter is not covered by an unexpired patent. Certain pharmaceutical patents may be extended as provided by law.

Why do patents expire after 20 years?

Patents expire because allowing them to last for too long places a constraint on others who want to improve upon existing technology. Current patent law allows inventors to recoup their investment and profit from their invention without slowing down innovation.

How do I check a patent number?

1. USPTO Patent Number Search. Enter the patent number you would like to access. Requires a TIFF file viewer to view the patent images.
2. Google Patents. Enter a patent number and you will be able to access the PDF version of the patent.

What is US patent number?

A Patent Number is assigned by the USPTO. A patent number may include up to eight characters and is formatted as follows: Utility : Patent numbers consist of six, seven or eight digits. Enter the Patent number excluding commas and spaces and omit leading zeroes.

What makes a patent valid?

Requirements for Patentability. The five primary requirements for patentability are: (1) patentable subject matter, (2) utility, (3) novelty, (4) nonobviousness, and (5) enablement.

Can a US patent be enforced in other countries?

Since the rights granted by a U.S. patent extend only throughout the territory of the United States and have no effect in a foreign country, an inventor who wishes patent protection in other countries must apply for a patent in each of the other countries or in regional patent offices.

Is Indian patent valid in US?

If a Patent is found to be invalid, it is revoked in all countries at the same time. Indian Patent Law only applies to patent disputes where the patent application was published but before the patent was granted. While the USA has a re-examination process that is different from that of the opposition party.

How long is a patent good for after 1995?

(Utility patents, the most common type of patent, are issued for useful inventions that are novel). For utility patents filed on or after June 8, 1995, the patent term is 20 years from the date of filing. For design patents, the period is 14 years from date of issuance.

CAN expired patent be revived?

In the U.S., lapsed patents can be reinstated during the first two years after an “unintentional” nonpayment of a maintenance fee for an issued patent, with a short statement that the error was unintentional and with the payment of a fee.

Can I buy a lapsed patent?

You can buy an expired patent by performing a patent search through the USPTO website (more on this later) and checking to see if the patent has expired. Once you find a patent that has expired and you want to buy, you can go ahead and contact the patent owner to negotiate purchasing the patent.

How many times can I renew a patent?

Patents cannot go on forever, not in the US or anywhere else. As long as you understand that patents will expire, then “patent renewal” may be considered a layman's term for the more technical term of patent maintenance. Patents cannot be renewed once their terms expire.

Can you sell a patented product?

The U.S. Supreme Court in a recent ruling has opined on the rights of a purchaser to use and resell patented products. The patent system give the patent owner the right to exclude others from making, using, and selling the patented invention, for the life of the patent.

How do I search for a patent on a date?

United States Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov) Patent searching can be done directly on the USPTO's web site. Full text and images are available for patents from 1976 to the most recent Tuesday. Images, current classification numbers and patent numbers only are available for patents from 1790 to 1975.

How much does a patent cost?

A patent attorney will usually charge between $8,000 and $10,000 for a patent application, but the cost can be higher. In most cases, you should budget between $15,000 and $20,000 to complete the patenting process for your invention. Previous: Why should you file a patent application?

What is the salary of a patent examiner?

Patent Agent salary in India with less than 2 year of experience to 13 years ranges from ₹ 3.1 Lakhs to ₹ 24.6 Lakhs with an average annual salary of ₹ 8 Lakhs based on 53 salaries.

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hello and welcome to another edition of inventors quick tips today we have a quick video for a question that often comes up is a particular patent expired so here is a quick summary of how that works and how you can check on the expiration status or enforce status for a specific patent so the term for this is patent term a patent term is how long a patent is in force once a patent is no longer in force then it generally cannot be used to stop competitors so if you were thinking of starting an enterprise but were concerned about a particular patent that was out there this is a common exercise to check if that patent is still in force so how long do patents last basically it's up to 20 years from the filing date but we are going to put an asterisk there because in certain cases it can go a little bit beyond the 20 years and we'll get into that in a few minutes the clock actually starts from its earliest effective non-provisional us filing date so if the patent claims priority to a provisional application or a foreign patent application we don't count that when it comes to starting the clock a patent term adjustment is something that the u.s patent office may grant in circumstances where there was an excessive delay in the examination process in such cases the u.s patent office may provide to use soccer parlance some bonus time sometimes a patent can go out of force earlier than the 20 years the most common way this typically happens is with unpaid maintenance fees recall that to keep a patent in force maintenance fees need to be periodically paid if they are not paid the patent goes out of force let's look at a real example here is a patent and as a learning exercise we want to answer the question when did this patent expire so there are a few key dates one is the filing date this application was filed as a pct or patent cooperation treaty type of application in the u.s patent trademark office on november 30th 2000. this patent claimed priority to a foreign application from november 30th 1999. another important thing to check is the patent term extension not every patent has one but this one happens to in particular as indicated it is 270 days so recall we don't start the clock from up original patent application or a foreign patent application so we're not going to use the date from the orange arrow we start counting 20 years from the date here by the blue arrow which is the first u.s patent application filing date so we're going to count 20 years from there from november 30th 2000. we know that a patent can last up to 20 years so we could could have expired on november 30th 2000. first we want to check if maintenance fees were paid if they weren't this patent will go out of force earlier than 20 years i have a video on maintenance fees if you want more information on that and i will put a link to that video in the description here we check the maintenance fees for this patent on the u.s patent office website and we see that they are all paid up so the patent should be enforced for the maximum possible term if these fees weren't paid then the patent would no longer be enforced once the deadline to pay one of these fees had ran out so now we know this patent should be enforced for its full 20-year term but now we need to apply the extension which is 270 days the best way to compute this is to go to a date calculator of which there are numerous available online here's the one i used and i used the 20-year anniversary date which was november 30th 2020 and added 270 days which brings us to august 27 2021 which is the date that the patent expired another way to find this information quickly is with google patents here is the patent as shown in google patents and here is our adjusted expiration date again it's august 27 2021 so this is the easy way but if you want to cross-check the results now you know how they arrived at that date note that if a patent is really old let's say filed at least 25 years ago then it is very very likely to be expired and no longer enforce as an example this patent on a razor that was filed in 1915 is no longer in force if i wanted to start a company that does the thing described in this patent this patent could not stop me of course it could not stop anyone else either so this patent would not do anything to stop competitors from making using or selling this razor either one final note the u.s patent office does provide a patent term calculator it's not something i use but i am sharing the page here and you can see the url at the top of the image if you wanted to investigate this area further note that what we covered here shows the basic principles for how to determine if a us patent is in force however they are not intended to cover a specific circumstance or situation so if you need this analysis done for one or more patents and are unsure then it's worth considering hiring a professional to help you with this analysis so hopefully you found this video helpful if so please like share and subscribe and thanks again for watching

Thanks for your comment Bernardine Tatters, have a nice day.
- Joseph Wik, Staff Member

hello everyone in this video we'll look at patent expiration dates we'll start with the general rules of when patents expire but mainly we'll be looking at the calculated patent expiration dates feature in the ifi claims database we'll see how that information is displayed in ifi records and the ways to search it we'll look at the calculated expiration date in a typical record and then we'll turn to the several kinds of exceptional situations where a patent term might be either shortened or extended and how that information is displayed and searched in ifi so let's get started the rule of thumb is that patent protection expires 20 years after the application was filed that's the law in most countries and has been the rule in the united states since 1978. there are some exceptions which we'll talk about but let's begin with a typical case we're looking at the legal status section of a u.s patent record in ifi claims and you see where it says that the calculated expiration date is september 25th 2039 this calculated expiration date is simply the application date plus 20 years if we go to the bibliographic tab for a moment you see the application date is september 25 2019. and the calculated expiration date can be searched in ifi using the expiration date or expd field the options for the search format are much like with any other date field in dialogue you can search for an exact date like this or for a whole year or select both a year and a month you can look for a range by using a hyphen in between two date values you can use the greater than symbol to look for expiration dates after any date or year or use the less than symbol to look for expirations before a certain date or year the expd search can be run alone or in combination with other searches such as a patent assignee search here we're looking for any microsoft patents that are calculated to expire in 2021 or 2022 you might do this kind of search for competitive intelligence for example or for your own company as a way to track which of your important patents are coming up on an expiration date or you can limit a term search by calculated expiration date as we see here the use case for this would be what's called a freedom to operate search where you're interested in using a certain type of technology and you want to know if it's currently under patent protection or when the relevant patents are due to expire so the calculated expiration date search is very flexible and it's easy to do in ifi claims and most of the time it's just a very straightforward calculation from the application date but there are several reasons why a patent's life span might be made either shorter or longer than the norm the most common reason by far for a patent to expire on some date other than the 20th anniversary of the application is if the patent owner fails to pay the required maintenance fees these fees are payable three years after the patent is issued then again seven years and again 11 years after issue there's a six-month payment window then a six-month grace period and if the fee is not paid the patent office will market expired and when that happens the ifi record will show it like this the patent status entry says expired fee related but notice this does not affect the calculated expiration date entry which in this case remains searchable in the record as march 12 2028 20 years after the application so if your goal is determining which patents are active and which are not you wouldn't use the calculated expiration date search alone that's not its purpose for more on using the patent status indicators in ifi i would encourage you to check out the separate video on that and i'll put a link down in the description there are two different ways in title 35 of the us code for a patent owner to seek an extension or adjustment of the expiration date beyond the normal 20 years the first would be a patent term adjustment under section 154 if the patent office has not yet issued a patent within three years after the application was filed then depending on the reasons and other factors the patent owner can apply for an adjustment to give the patent a later expiration date if that request is granted then the record in ifi reflects it in the way that you see here note that the original calculated expiration date of september 14 2035 is still searchable in the expd field and so is the adjusted expiration date of april 5 2036 so both dates are kept in the record for search purposes a patent term extension under section 156 is something different this has to do only with pharmaceuticals it's part of what's known as the hatch waxman act and this section lets the owner of a pharma patent apply for a longer period of patent protection based on delays that may have occurred not at the patent office but in the process of testing and approval by the fda the idea is that an extension gives the drug company a longer opportunity to recoup the expenses involved in the long process of developing the drug and getting it approved the calculation method is complicated but the patent office can grant an extension of up to five years often it's shorter and if an extension is granted this is what it looks like in an ifi record for search purposes again as in a section 154 term adjustment the original calculated expiration date is still searchable but the extended expiration date is indexed as well so either date could determine the limits of your search results this record for example would be retrieved if you searched for records with an expiration date before the end of 2006 but when you looked at the record you'd see that it was extended into 2007 by the same token if you search for records with an expiration date during 2007 you would again get this record but you could see that originally it was going to expire in 2006 before it was extended into 2007. this way the expd search is more inclusive and it's easy to tell from the record how the expiration date has changed a terminal disclaimer is a type of limit on the duration of a patent it's used for example when a patent owner wants to get an additional patent on an improved version of something it is patented already but because the patents are similar they need to overcome a rejection based on double patenting so if a patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer it means that this patent will expire on the same date as another usually older patent held by the same owner this can get complicated so the ifi record does not try to calculate the possible effect of a terminal disclaimer instead the record just shows the normally calculated expiration date but it flags the presence of a terminal disclaimer so that you can investigate further as needed the existence of a terminal disclaimer is also noted on the face of the original patent as we see here so that's it this video by the way is the last of a three-part series on search enhancements found in the database ifi claims the first one was on ifi's probable assignee feature as a way to find patent applications that would otherwise remain hidden from assignee searches the second was on the patent status feature in ifi

Thanks Palestinoq your participation is very much appreciated
- Joseph Wik

About the author

Joseph Wik

I've studied telecommunications engineering at Cottey College in Nevada and I am an expert in set theory. I usually feel crappy. My previous job was account collector I held this position for 28 years, I love talking about base jumping and heliskiing. Huge fan of Lucas Til I practice badminton and collect phone cards.