Asterisk (*) and Double Asterisk (**) After Prior Art Patent Number
An asterisk (*) marked after a patent number indicates that this is considered a 102 prior art reference. A double asterisk (**) is marked after a main reference (1st order) to 103 prior art. For example, the patent at issue was rendered obvious over reference A** in view of reference B. Then, reference A is marked with **, and reference B is not marked with **. The discrimination of the first prior art reference, by rule of thumb, may have a correlation with the relevance to the patent at issue.
Family Prior Art
Family Prior Art is provided as respective web links corresponding to each patent family, direct to a single page of reference, including reference cited data (backward citation of patents), referenced by data (forward citation of patents) and other reference data (backward citation of non-patent literature). The reference cited and other reference data are the same as the data printed on a published patent.
Eligible Date of Prior Art
The eligible date of prior art falls under 35 USC § 102, including Pre-AIA 102 (a), (b), (d), and (e), and AIA 102 (a). A document or a patent application shall be published or patented before the eligible date under any of the aforementioned 35 USC § 102 to be eligible as prior art to a patent at issue.
Note that there are date of invention issues for the eligible date under Pre-AIA 35 USC § 102 (a) and (e): Prior art is eligible if it is patented or published before THE DATE OF THE INVENTION. The eligible date provided herein is THE EARLIEST PRIORITY DATE of the patent, which is often inferred as being the date of invention based on public data, because swearing to an earlier priority date is usually not considered to be proper or allowable. Please note that this inference COULD BE OVERTURNED by uncovered evidence, such as an affidavit of inventors.
Eligibility as Prior Art
The eligibility as prior art is generated for the purpose of providing a reference to evaluate the eligibility of a patent/patent application as prior art to the patent at issue. The result is calculated by comparing the dates, the applicant, and the inventors under 35 USC § 102, including the pre-AIA or AIA versions.
There are also exceptions not considered which may also overturn the result of an evaluation:
- The date of invention issued under pre-AIA 35 USC § 102 (a) and (e);
- The PCT priority issued under pre-AIA 35 35 USC § 102 (e); and
- Exceptions under AIA 35 USC § 102 (a), such as AIA 35 USC § 102 (b) issues.
Estimated Expiration Date
The estimated expiration date includes a presumption that all maintenance fees will be paid. This date is calculated on the basis of the earliest effective filing date plus the patent term (e.g., 20 years for utility patents filed after June 8, 1995) and is adjusted by the patent term adjustment recorded in the USPTO PAIR system.
Note that patent term extensions under 35 USC § 156 and terminal disclaimers are NOT considered in this estimated expiration date.
Event Date
For each event in the reexamination or prosecution history, the event date is provided from the mailroom date of the corresponding image file wrapper in the USPTO PAIR System; and
For each event in the patent review in USPTO PTAB, the event date is provided from the filing date of corresponding documents in the USPTO PTAB system.
Event Description (and Event Code)
For events in the reexamination or prosecution history, each event is defined by a document code and a document description that corresponds to image file wrappers in the USPTO PAIR system; and
For events in the patent review in USPTO PTAB, each event is defined by a normalized document type and a document title in the USPTO PTAB system, including the Petition, Preliminary Response, Decision of Institution, Patent Owner’s Response, Oral Hearing, and Final Decision.
Legal Basis
The legal basis may be any 35 USC code, CFR code, or reasons of rejection identified from:
- Rejection file wrappers of the prosecution history;
- Request, rejection, and decision file wrappers in reexamination; and
- Petition and decision file wrappers in patent review
The legal basis may include 35 USC 101, 35 USC 102, 35 USC 103, and 35 USC 112. Double patenting and pertinent prior art may also be provided in the legal basis, which is mostly cited in file wrappers without any codes.
Legal Status
- The legal Status of a US patent/patent application
For any US patent or patent application, the legal status is calculated based on the status data recorded in the USPTO PAIR system and the maintenance fee payment status. The legal status of a US patent/patent application is selected from Pending (pending patent application), Active (granted patent), and Inactive (abandoned patent application, lapsed patent due to non-payment, or expired patent).
- The legal Status of a non-US patent/patent application
For any non-US patent or patent application, the legal status indicates whether the patent/patent application is issued or published (pending or abandoned cannot be indicated separately due to data availability).
Number of Rejections
The number of non-final rejections and final rejections in the prosecution history of a patent.
Original Assignee
For an issued patent, the original assignee means the assignee at the time the patent is issued. Similarly, for a published patent application, the original assignee means the assignee at the time the patent is published.
Patent Family
A patent family is comprised of the patents and patent applications that have exactly the same priority or combination of priorities as the patent at issue. USPTO, EPO, and other major patent offices provide patents/patent applications in a patent family by the aforementioned definition via a common identification (family ID). Patents and patent applications in different jurisdictions by the aforementioned definition may be more likely to claim for the same invention.
Patent Prior Art
Patent prior art contains only patents/patent applications previously considered as prior art. Non-patent literature is currently not available in the summary table, but it can be found in the image file wrapper or text version of the image file wrapper document.
Priority Claims of US Patents
Priority claims provide the following information about a US patent/patent application:
- Patent at Issue: For a patent/patent application itself that is the patent at issue of Quality Insights
- Child of Continuation Application, Continuation-in-Part Application, or Divisional Application: For a patent/patent application that claims priority of continuation application, continuation-in-part application, or divisional application to the patent at issue; or
- Parent of Continuation Application, Continuation-in-Part Application, or Divisional Application: For a patent/patent application that the patent at issue claims priority of a continuation application, continuation-in-part application, or divisional application.
Reasons of Patentability/Allowable Subject Matter
The elements of claims cited by an examiner as not being disclosed (anticipated or rendered as obvious) by prior art. The reasons of patentability or allowable subject matter are provided in Notice of Allowance (NOA) in prosecution history and Notice to Intent to Issue a Reexamination Certificate (RXNIRC) in reexamination.
Related Proceedings/Post-Grant Proceedings
Post-grant proceedings in USPTO related to a patent, including Ex Parte Reexamination (EPR), Inter Partes Reexamination, Supplemental Reexamination, Inter Partes Review (IPR), Covered Business Method (CBM) patent review, and Post-Grant Review (PGR).
Please note that in regards to Post-Grant Proceedings, for the re-examination data, only filing of request and certificate of issuance will be updated.
Second Degree Prior Art
Second degree (prior) art references are additional prior art references suggested based on forward and backward 35 U.S.C. § 102 or 103 citations in prosecution history and post-grant IPR/CBM/PGR proceedings. Each of the second degree art references are provided along with a calculation of whether the citation meets the criteria of eligibility as prior art for the patent at issue. All the second degree (prior) art references provided in the “Second Degree Prior Art” page, could be summarized as the following:
- Backward § 102 or 103 citations of backward § 102 or 103 citations
- Forward § 102 or 103 citations of backward § 102 or 103 citations
- Backward § 102 or 103 citations of forward § 102 or 103 citations
Note: The prior art references may be limited to DATA AVAILABLE in the Quality Insights, which mainly includes prior art references of PATENTS GRANTED AFTER YEAR 2000.
As illustrated in the following diagram, the second degree prior art of a patent/patent application may include:
- Patent application(s) that have been considered as US patent prior art of the patent at issue, which are also patent application(s) that have been considered as US patent prior art listed on the Overview page.
- US patent application(s) having US patent prior art in common with the patent at issue, which are also patent application(s) having the US patent prior art listed on the Overview page considered as its prior art.
- Patent prior art of US patent application(s) having the patent at issue considered as its prior art.
Semantic Similarity
This is a metric to evaluate how much relevance there is between two patent applications. Semantic similarity is calculated by comparing the titles, abstracts, and/ or claims of a patent with any of those of the patent at issue to determine how many common concepts (groups of related keywords in vectors) there are. This is done by a mature topological mechanism to evaluate semantic similarity in the area of natural language processing (NLP).