Q: US Patent number 7,855,232, maintenance fee is due. This application is a continuation application. Pay will cover all?
This application is a continuation application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/263,808, filed Nov. 1, 2005, which is a continuation application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/760,741, filed Jan. 20, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,087,639 B2, issued Aug. 8, 2006, which is a divisional application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/081,297, filed Feb. 20, 2002, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,703,524 B2, issued Mar. 9, 2004, which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/270,116, filed Feb. 20, 2001, all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.
A:
There are often families of patents. They may have an initial provisional application or non-provisional application and then a set of branches with divisional applications, continuation in part (CIP) applications, and continuation applications.
Some of these may issue as patents. There may be several patents that issue in a family. Each patent will need periodic payments of maintenance fees by year 4, 8 and 12 to stay in force. Paying a maintenance fee for one patent in a family has no impact on other members in the family.
I hope this helps.
Kevin E Flynn
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