To augment the useful answer already provided by Ms. Di Nola-Baron, let me add that the period that an application is pending varies greatly. If you expedite the process, it is possible to get a patent granted and issued within a year. The US government thinks that if the process takes more than... View More

It is not clear what you are asking. Patents do not get updated. There is a maintenance fee that is paid three times during the life of the patent.

There is a process to correct errors in the issued patent but that usually results in a separate piece of paper called a Certificate of... View More

The rights provided in an issued patent are very specific. The rights are to preclude others from doing what is in one of the claims. To infringe a claim, one needs to do everything in the claim (or a legal equivalent to what is in the claim).

This gets tricky. If a patent owner has... View More

Great question.

I looked at the patent. I agree, there is very little that strikes my eye as novel. Keep in mind that this is a design patent not the much more powerful but hard to get utility patent. This design patent does not preclude people from having a threaded top with a place for... View More

Mr. Mlynek's answer was perfect. Let me drive home one point. A patent is a right to exclude within the country that issued the patent. So a US patent would cover things made, sold, or used in the US. That would include something made Albania and imported into the US or something made in... View More

https://patents.google.com/patent/US6616673B1/en?oq=6%2c616%2c673 has the HTML and the PDF.

I hope that this helps.

Kevin E Flynn

A patent is a reward to inventors and to those the risk money to bring forth a new product or service. This was authorized in the US Constitution under Article 1 Section 8, Clause 8.

The Congress shall have Power * * * To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for... View More

The leading digit D tells you that it is not a utility patent (on the features) but a design patent on the appearance. This keeps people from selling things that look just like a product and thus fooling consumers into buying a knockoff. So they have not patented all combinations of towels with... View More

Think of a patent as a wall. There are a few options.

1) Work around it. Redesign your device to avoid the complete set of requirements of any one claim in the patent.

2) Get a door. Get a license to pass through the patent wall.

3) Break down the wall. Work to... View More

It all depends on what you have in the specific language of the claims. If the claims are closely tethered to a specific use case then they may not apply to another use case.

Not sure what you mean by function. A patent on a method of using a screwdriver to drive screws is unlikely to... View More

I interpreted your question as an interest in filing a patent application on innovations that are part of your work on your thesis.

If that is your question then here are two useful bits of information.

If you are a Ph.D. candidate and work in a lab funded with federal dollars or... View More

I have seen this sort of question floating around. It is based on a misperception on how patents work. Lots of people get named on a patent as an inventor as that is required by the US Constitution. But that does not mean that the person owns the patent or gets any profits from the patent.... View More

I do not know what happened but your question has been sent out to patent attorneys. Most patent attorney focus on helping businesses and inventors obtain patents and will not have the information you seek.

I suggest that you repost your question to go to criminal law attorneys.

The ownership of a patent can change over time. The patent when it is issued can show the current assignee. However, the patent as issued does not get reprinted when the patent is assigned to another owner.

There is a USPTO database where patent owners can register the assignments and... View More

Your question was posted as a patent (invention) question for Pennsylvania. You won't find any good answers there. You need to ask the question again and say that your question is for "real estate law" for the US Territory of Puerto Rico (the territories are listed after the... View More

You may need to work with a patent attorney to fully answer this question. As a start, a Ronald Carter is a named inventor for US PAT. NO. US10949153B2 for Methods and systems for facilitating the generation of a customized response based on a context. The text of that patent indicates that... View More

I am pleased that you care about avoiding the patent rights of others. However, the short answer is that there is no way to give you a useful answer in this forum. This question requires that someone with the right skills look in great detail at what has been claimed and what you propose to do.... View More

Let me help get you oriented.

1) 20210022609 is NOT an issued US patent. It is publication of an application for patent. It is part of a family of patent applications filed by Northwestern University including a PCT application which is the front end for many patent systems in the world... View More

From your question, my sense is that you think that the patent process is much like seeking a trademark or a copyright where there is a registration and you get a number assigned to you.

That is not how it works.

For a patent to be granted on a particular claim, there are many... View More

You need to repost this question as a trademark question so that is is presented to trademark attorneys as patent attorney work with inventions not names.