Extensions

Patent Term Adjustments (PTA)

Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) can extend the term of a U.S. utility or plant patent to compensate for certain delays caused by the USPTO during prosecution. The total PTA is added to the standard 20-year patent lifespan, which is measured from the earliest filing date of the application (for applications filed on or after June 8, 1995). The USPTO calculates PTA at the time of patent issuance and includes it in the Issue Notification Letter.

Common delays that can lead to PTA include:

• Failure to issue a first Office Action or Notice of Allowance within 14 months of the application filing date.
• Failure to respond to an applicant's complete reply to an Office Action within four months.
• Failure to act on an application within four months after a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) or a federal court.
• Failure to issue a patent within four months after payment of the issue fee.
• The application being pending for more than three years from its filing date (excluding applicant-caused delays).

Applicant delays can reduce accrued PTA.

To determine the exact PTA for US8027326, one would typically need to consult the patent's Issue Notification Letter or its file history in USPTO Patent Center. Without direct access to these specific documents for US8027326, the precise PTA amount cannot be stated here.

Patent Term Extensions (PTE)

Patent Term Extension (PTE) is available under the 1984 Drug Price Competition and Patent Restoration Act (Hatch-Waxman Act). This allows for the extension of patents claiming products that require regulatory approval (e.g., human and veterinary pharmaceuticals, food additives, color additives, medical devices) to restore patent term lost during the regulatory review period.

For a patent to be eligible for PTE:

• The patent must claim a product, a method of using the product, or a method of manufacturing the product.
• The patent must not have expired.
• The term of the patent must never have been extended under 35 U.S.C. 156.
• The application for extension must be submitted by the owner of record or its agent within 60 days of the regulatory agency's approval of the commercial marketing application.
• The product must have been subject to a regulatory review period before its commercial marketing or use.
• No other patent term has been extended for the same regulatory review period for the product.

PTE cannot exceed five years and cannot extend the patent term over 14 years from the date of receipt of marketing approval.

Given that US8027326 relates to a "Method and system for high data rate multi-channel WLAN architecture," it is highly unlikely to be eligible for Patent Term Extension under the Hatch-Waxman Act, as it does not appear to claim a product requiring regulatory approval from agencies like the FDA.

Continuation Applications

A continuation application is a subsequent application filed while an earlier, related non-provisional application (the "parent" application) is still pending. It allows an applicant to pursue additional claims based on the same disclosure as the parent application. The continuation application benefits from the filing date of the parent application. The USPTO's Open Data Portal and Patent Center provide information on patent application data.

Divisional Applications

A divisional application is filed when an examiner determines that an original patent application contains more than one patentable invention and issues a restriction requirement, forcing the applicant to elect one invention for prosecution. The applicant can then file a divisional application to pursue the non-elected inventions, effectively getting patent protection on inventions not chosen in the parent application. Like continuation applications, divisional applications maintain the benefit of the filing date of the original (parent) application.

Related Family Members

Patent family members are patents and applications that share a common priority claim. These can include continuations, divisionals, and continuation-in-part applications, as well as foreign counterparts. Reviewing the "Related U.S. Application Data" section on the front page of a patent or using patent search tools on the USPTO website (such as Patent Public Search or Patent Center) can identify related family members.

Projected Expiration Date

The general rule for U.S. utility patents filed on or after June 8, 1995, is that the patent term expires 20 years from the earliest filing date of the application, subject to any Patent Term Adjustments (PTA) or extensions (PTE).

For US8027326:

• Filing Date: January 12, 2005
• Nominal Expiration Date (20 years from filing): January 12, 2025

However, the Google Patents information for US8027326 B2 states the "Adjusted expiration" date as December 25, 2027. This indicates that there has been a Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) of approximately 2 years, 11 months, and 13 days (from January 12, 2025, to December 25, 2027). This adjustment would be due to delays by the USPTO during the patent's prosecution.

Therefore, the projected expiration date for US8027326, considering the Patent Term Adjustment, is December 25, 2027. There is no indication that this patent has received any Patent Term Extensions (PTE).