Extensions

Patent Term Adjustments (PTA)

Patent Term Adjustments (PTA) are granted to utility or plant patents to compensate for certain administrative delays by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) during the prosecution of a patent application. These delays include the USPTO failing to:

• Issue a first Official Action or notice of allowance within 14 months of filing.
• Issue an action within four months of an applicant's response to an Official Action.
• Issue the patent within four months of payment of the issue fee.
• Issue a patent within three years of the actual filing date of the application (with certain provisos).

Any such term extensions can be reduced or eliminated if delays are caused by actions of the applicant.

For US Patent 11446447, the Google Patents overview indicates an "Anticipated expiration" date of March 29, 2026. Given that the earliest priority date is December 30, 2005 (see "Related Family Members" below), a standard 20-year patent term would end on December 30, 2025. The difference suggests a PTA of approximately three months. The official PTA calculation would be detailed in the Issue Notification Letter and on the patent document itself.

Patent Term Extensions (PTE)

Patent Term Extensions (PTE) are available under the Hatch-Waxman Act for patents claiming products (such as human drugs, food or color additives, medical devices, animal drugs, and veterinary biological products) that require regulatory approval, to restore a portion of the patent term lost during the regulatory review process. PTE aims to compensate inventors for patent term loss due to regulatory delay during the drug approval process by the FDA. The PTE cannot exceed five years and cannot extend the patent term over 14 years from the date of receipt of marketing approval.

There is no information in the provided patent text or associated Google Patents data indicating that US Patent 11446477 has received or is eligible for Patent Term Extension (PTE). PTE is typically applicable to patents covering products subject to premarket government approval from regulatory agencies, such as the FDA.

Continuation Applications, Divisional Applications, and Related Family Members

US Patent 11446477 is part of a patent family with a complex prosecution history, tracing back to earlier applications. The patent explicitly states its lineage in the "REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS" section:

• This patent (US11446477) is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/660,750, filed July 26, 2017.
• That application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/700,789, filed April 30, 2015, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 9,814,868.
• That application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/267,554, filed October 6, 2011, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 9,474,886.
• That application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/392,348, filed March 29, 2006, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 8,048,089.
• The earliest applications in the chain claim the benefit of:
  • U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/755,310, filed December 30, 2005 (earliest priority date).
  • U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/764,668, filed February 2, 2006.

The filing date of the application for US11446477 is July 19, 2019.

The provided information does not explicitly mention any divisional applications. A divisional application typically arises when a patent examiner determines that an application contains more than one invention, and the applicant elects to pursue only one invention in the original application, filing separate applications for the non-elected inventions.

Projected Expiration Date

The term of a U.S. utility patent filed on or after June 8, 1995, expires 20 years from the earliest filing date of the patent application, or 20 years from the filing date of the earliest application to which it claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §§ 120, 121, or 365(c).

For US Patent 11446477, the earliest priority date is December 30, 2005 (U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/755,310). Therefore, the unadjusted patent term would expire on December 30, 2025.

However, the Google Patents information indicates an "Anticipated expiration" date of March 29, 2026. This suggests that the patent received approximately 3 months of Patent Term Adjustment. As of the current date, May 19, 2026, the patent's legal status is listed as "Expired - Lifetime," which is consistent with the anticipated expiration date of March 29, 2026.