US Patent with priority date of 2005 has filing date of 2017?

Started by jeff.oneill, 12-19-17 at 04:06 AM

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jeff.oneill

I came across 9,604,242 today and am very confused by relevant dates.

On PAIR, it has a "Filing or 371 (c) Date" of Jan 3, 2017 even though it claims priority back to 2005!

Here is my understanding of the history:

  • 2005 -- EP provisional
  • 2006 -- EP non-provisional
  • 2008 -- enters US
  • 2011 -- US publication
  • Mar 28, 2017 -- Issues

It has a patent term extension of nearly 6 years, but that shouldn't change the filing date.

Is this just an error by the PTO or is there a rational explanation for this?
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fewyearsin

June 23, 2006 is what the actual front page of the patent says.

Which data source is giving you that date?

I see in PAIR that they had trouble getting one of the inventors to sign a Declaration.  Which means that all the PCT requirements weren't met.  So this is a unique case, and somewhere, something could have easily been mis-entered or not corrected.
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jeff.oneill

The date is in PAIR in the "Application Data" tab.

You can see 7 other cases like this here:
pairbulkdata.uspto.gov/#/search?fq=appFilingDate%3A%5B2017-1-1T00%3A00%3A00Z%20TO%202017-12-19T23%3A59%3A59Z%5D%2BappEarlyPubDate%3A%5B2000-1-1T00%3A00%3A00Z%20TO%202015-1-1T23%3A59%3A59Z%5D&q=*%3A*&sort=applId%20asc

Each of these has a 2017 filing date in PAIR but a publication date in 2014 or earlier.

I feel like this must be PTO error but I wanted to make sure that I haven't missed something in my understanding of filing dates for cases that are originally filed in other countries and then enter the US.
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jeff.oneill

You'll need to add https before the link in my previous post.  I had to modify it because I'm not allowed to include links yet.
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Tobmapsatonmi

From what I've seen of PAIR, where it lists "Filing or 371 (c) Date", it tends to default to the 371 date, not the actual application date. 

As fewyearsin mentions, the fulfillment of the 371 requirements can be significantly delayed.  In the first case you list, they had deficiencies in the drawings and had trouble locating an inventor to get a declaration.  They actually got the notice of allowance before they tracked him down and finally got him to sign the dec.  Once the dec and corrected drawings were entered, they finally got their 371-c date.

The second one on your list (app no 13/637481) was actually allowed several times but they needed an inventor to sign and ended up paying the issue fee without him, then petitioned to withdraw from issue (citing a need to file IDS-RCE), got another notice of allowance but still didn't have the inventor's sig on the dec, tried a substitute statement but that didn't work because the priority filing was before the new rules were effected, filed petition to accept the app without signature (inventor apparently deceased by this time), got the petition refused, filed new petion, refused, finally got a petition accepted in April 2017.

The confusing thing to me is that they got it issued in May 2017 on the basis of the 2nd time the issue fee was paid, in 2015, but in skimming the thing I didn't see that the app was suspended or anything like that, and the 2015 notice of allowance only gave them 2 months (plus up to 2 more on extension) to get the stuff together.

Anyway, I suspect that the rest of your list will have similar explanation for the delay between actual filing date and perfection of the 371(c) requirements.

An outstanding question, I suppose, is why PAIR lists the 371 perfection date but the face of the patents (the first 2 I checked, anyway) list for the date of the 371(c) some date other than when they perfected 371 requirements.
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jeff.oneill

Thanks for the clear explanations.

Seems that PAIR should list both the filing date and the 371 perfection date.

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