The shares owned by the deceased, like any other property, go to the heirs as specified in the intestacy statutes.

In the US, you need to pay for it 3 times after it issues: at 3.5 years, at 7.5 years, and 11.5 years.

For most patents outside of the US, the maintenance fees need to be paid on annual basis.

No. A provisional patent application that is not followed up with a non-provisional patent application is not published and does not result in a patent, and thus cannot serve as prior art against another patent case.

This is, unfortunately, a common problem. In your case, you cannot get a... View More

It sounds like you're asking for an intellectual property search for your grandfather. If you'd like to search this for yourself, you should search for his assignments in the databases at the USPTO (https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair) and the Library of Congress... View More

That depends. Patent rights are country-specific, and therefore your question involves whether that company has a Chinese patent as well as a US patent. (Patent rights generally protect making using or selling the patented technology.) If the Chinese entity has any patent protection domestically or... View More

Well, you can't patent an idea, but you can patent your invention in the field of robotics.

These appear to be a set of three US design patents and one US utility patent. A United States patent is effective against people that make, use, sell, or offer to sell an infringing product in the US.

So a US patent can be used against a product made in China and imported into the US, or... View More

Your short question includes many key questions of patent law.

1) You do not infringe a patent. You infringe one or more specific independent claims (ones that start with no reference to another claim) and possibly some dependent claims (a claim that adds additional limitations to at least... View More

Kevin's answer is pretty close. To put it succinctly, unless you have discovered a new way of manufacturing the bamboo into a golf bag (e.g. a new way to join the pieces of bamboo), you probably can't get a utility patent. Regarding design, you may be able to get a patent for a bamboo... View More

I see that you filed a patent application and the PTO processed the application with an Office Action rejecting the claim as too vague to even examine. After a period of six months, the application was deemed abandoned. There is an indication in the file that the final notice was returned as... View More

Most products are used with other products that are patented. Think of all the peripheral devices that can work with your laptop, your cell phone, or your smart speaker.

I hope this helps.

Kevin E Flynn

This happens all the time. If it is not granted, and there is no likelihood of it being granted, then whatever is disclosed in the patent application is dedicated to the public. Anyone can use whatever is in the published application with or without modifications.

Yes. Ownership rights to a patent can be transferred by an assignment. Partial rights can be transferred by license.

Assignments should be recorded at the USPTO at https://epas.uspto.gov/. Prior recorded transfers can be seen at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html for patent... View More

It depends upon what you and the buyer agree to.

If the rights to the patent have been assigned into your company and you sell that company to buyer, then buyer owns the assets including your patent. You would not have the right to practice that patented invention without getting a... View More

I do not see why not. A patent is a piece of property and moves with much of the same rules. The USPTO system for recording ownership has a selection for letters testamentary which is a document issued by a probate court to an executor. See https://epas.uspto.gov/

This is really a... View More

If you have two inventions, then you will need to have two patents. If you have one invention, but it has several different flavors of the invention, then you can just file one patent application. Due to the costs, it is obviously beneficial to have everything in one patent application.... View More

Yes, this happens all the time. This is often done because, under the US law, a patent has to claim only ONE invention, so if the claims are directed to several inventions, the Patent Office asks the inventor to select which of the claims the Patent Office should examine. The rest of the claims... View More

Congress has asked the USPTO examiners provide a first substantive review (Office Acton) within 14 months. If they do not do so, the patent owner can be awarded extra days at the end of the patent life to compensate for the slow response. This is called Patent Term Adjustment (PTA). Some patent... View More

No, in general you as "heir apparent" don't have choate rights to the land until the present owner has died.

A patent, in this context, would be equivalent to a deed, but from the federal government. As I understand your question, title is still held by the BLM (the US... View More

I am not familiar with the patent that you are concerned about but I can give you a generic answers.

A patent that was issued without an adequate examination of all the relevant prior art can be reexamined if someone submits the documentation and the filing fee for a reexamination request.... View More