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Term, Application History, and Family of Patent 7,154,961

Based on a detailed analysis of the patent documentation for U.S. Patent No. 7,154,961, the following information outlines the patent's term, application history, and related family members.

Patent Term and Projected Expiration

• Filing Date: The application for this patent, US10/501,906, was filed on October 18, 2002.
• Term Calculation: For utility patents filed on or after June 8, 1995, the term is 20 years from the earliest non-provisional application filing date.
• Projected Expiration Date: Based on the October 18, 2002, filing date, the 20-year term concluded on October 18, 2022.
• Patent Term Adjustment/Extension (PTA/PTE): There is no record of any Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) or Patent Term Extension (PTE) being granted for this patent. The official status of the patent is "Expired - Lifetime," which is consistent with the calculated expiration date.
• Maintenance Fees: Legal event records show the patent temporarily lapsed in January 2019 for failure to pay maintenance fees. However, it was officially reinstated in December 2019 after the late fee was accepted, and it remained active until its natural expiration in 2022.

Continuation and Divisional Applications

The '961 patent is part of a chain of related U.S. applications that claim priority to the same initial filing date.

• Continuation Application: The "Related Child Applications" section of the patent record explicitly identifies application US11/633,421 (which issued as patent US 7,567,622 B2) as a continuation of the application that led to the '961 patent.
• Chain of Continuing Applications: The patent family data shows a succession of applications claiming priority to the original 2002 filing, creating a series of related patents and applications:
  1. US10/501,906 (Issued as US 7,154,961 B2, the patent in question)
  2. US11/633,421 (Issued as US 7,567,622 B2)
  3. US12/490,096 (Published as US 2009/0262858 A1; listed as abandoned)
  4. US13/034,348 (Issued as US 8,325,845 B2)

No divisional applications were explicitly identified in the provided records.

Patent Family Members

The initial application was filed internationally under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), leading to a family of patents in various countries, all sharing the same priority date of October 18, 2002.

• PCT Application: WO2004036818A1
• European Patent: EP1552639B1
• Japanese Patent: JP3885078B2
• Chinese Patent: CN1620776B
• Korean Patent: KR100789042B1
• Other Jurisdictions: The patent family also includes filings in Australia (AU2002368296A1), Austria (ATE383689T1), and Germany (DE60224588T2).

All members of this patent family are now expired due to having reached the end of their statutory term.