Extensions

US Patent 6317838 was filed on April 29, 1998, and issued on November 13, 2001. [cite: The provided patent text]

Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) and Patent Term Extension (PTE)

• Patent Term Adjustment (PTA): Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) was established by the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 to compensate patentees for certain delays caused by the USPTO during the prosecution of a utility or plant patent application. However, PTA applies to applications filed after May 28, 2000. Since US patent 6317838 was filed on April 29, 1998, which is before May 29, 2000, it is not eligible for Patent Term Adjustment.
• Patent Term Extension (PTE): Patent Term Extension (PTE) is available under the Hatch-Waxman Act (35 U.S.C. § 156) for patents on certain human drugs, food or color additives, medical devices, animal drugs, and veterinary biological products. The purpose of PTE is to restore some of the patent term lost while awaiting premarket government approval from a regulatory agency, primarily the FDA. There is no indication within the patent text or general patent information that US patent 6317838, which concerns a "Method and architecture to provide a secured remote access to private resources," relates to these specific types of products. Therefore, it is highly unlikely to have received or been eligible for a Patent Term Extension.

Continuation and Divisional Applications

The provided patent text and readily available public information do not explicitly list any continuation or divisional applications directly linked to US patent 6317838.

• A continuation application allows an applicant to pursue additional claims based on the same disclosure as an earlier "parent" application, provided it is filed before the parent application issues or is abandoned.
• A divisional application is filed when an initial patent application contains claims to more than one invention, and the USPTO requires the applicant to restrict the claims to one invention. The other inventions can then be pursued in divisional applications.

Without specific information from the patent's file wrapper or a detailed family search in the USPTO database, we cannot confirm the existence of any continuation or divisional applications.

Related Family Members

The patent text refers to US09/067,961 as the application number for US6317838. This indicates that US6317838 is the patent granted from application US09/067,961. This is the primary family member directly associated with the patent number. No other related patent family members (e.g., continuations-in-part, foreign equivalents beyond the priority claim) are explicitly detailed in the provided information.

Projected Expiration Date

The legal status of US patent 6317838 is listed as "Expired - Lifetime," with an anticipated expiration date of April 29, 2018. [cite: The provided patent text] This date is 20 years from its filing date (April 29, 1998), which is the standard patent term for utility patents filed on or after June 8, 1995. As the patent was not eligible for PTA and there is no indication of PTE, this expiration date is accurate. The patent has already expired.