Q: Can my patent number 6,331,024 be revived because of missed payment on my final maintenance fee? William F. Gulley
Because of my work requiring me to travel and numerous floods in my home town at the time I forgot to pay the final maintenance fee and therefore the patent expired. Although I beleive the time limit has expired are will expire soon anyway I would like to revive it and also have questions about upgrades that have been done to make it stronger, safer and more desirable in the construction trades in which it was designed for. Please reply to (williamgulley1@hotmail.com), thanks for your time.
A:
It looks like your patent claims priority to 1997, and was issued in 2001, so it would have expired by now anyway.
If you are looking to protect your improvements to your previous invention, you are going to have to file a new patent anyway. The expiration of the 6,331,024 patent, or even the existence of it, won't have any impact on your new invention.
Good luck!
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