At Altimatia we offer patent preparation and prosecution services. We work with companies and individual inventors, particularly in the areas of chemistry, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology.
For a free consultation please fill out an invention disclosure form and mail it to us. Your information will be kept strictly confidential. To insure confidentiality be sure to use the U.S. Mail, not email.
If you are currently pursuing a patent chances are that you need to know about Patent Term Adjustment. In 1995 the term of a patent was changed to be 20 years from patent application filing instead of 17 years from patent issue. To insure that patentees still have at least 17 years of exclusivity for their inventions, congress passed laws granting term extensions for certain patent office delays. The American Inventor's Protection Act of 1999 further specified the reasons, and the calculating procedures, for Patent Term Adjustment.
The rules specify granting patent term adjustment for patent office delays, and reducing term adjustment for patentee delays. For valuable inventions, each extra day of sales may be worth a considerable amount of money. It pays to make sure that you are getting all of the patent term to which you are entitled.
This summer I'll be speaking on Patent Term Adjustment at the annual meeting of the National Association of Patent Practitioners. The slides of my talk, giving an overview of Patent Term Adjustment, are available by clicking Pat Term Adj on the left menu.
David Gange, April 25, 2005