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Analysis of Patent Term, Continuations, and Family for U.S. Patent 8,958,853

This analysis details the patent term, application history, and related family members for U.S. Patent 8,958,853 ("the '853 patent").

Patent Term and Expiration

• Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) / Extension (PTE): There is no record of any Patent Term Adjustment or Patent Term Extension for the '853 patent. The prosecution from its filing date (October 15, 2014) to its issue date (February 17, 2015) was exceptionally fast and did not incur the types of USPTO-caused delays that would trigger a PTA.
• Projected Expiration Date: The term of a U.S. patent is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest U.S. non-provisional application to which it claims priority. The '853 patent claims priority to U.S. Application No. 14/176,107, which was filed on February 9, 2014. Therefore, the projected expiration date for U.S. Patent 8,958,853 is February 9, 2034, assuming all required maintenance fees are paid in a timely manner. This is consistent with the anticipated expiration date listed in the patent's data.

Application and Family History

The '853 patent is part of a larger family of applications that all claim priority to a provisional application filed in 2013. The history demonstrates a strategy of filing subsequent applications to pursue additional or modified claims based on the original disclosure.

• Provisional Application:

  • U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/835,234: Filed on June 14, 2013. This application established the priority date for the inventions claimed in the subsequent non-provisional applications.

• Parent Application:

  • U.S. Application No. 14/176,107: Filed on February 9, 2014. This was the first non-provisional application in the family. It was published as US 2014/0370857 A1 but was later abandoned in favor of its child applications. The '853 patent directly claims priority to this application.

• The '853 Patent's Application:

  • U.S. Application No. 14/515,477: Filed on October 15, 2014, as a continuation of the '107 application. This application matured into the granted U.S. Patent 8,958,853.

• Continuation-in-Part and Subsequent Continuations:

  • U.S. Application No. 15/070,736: Filed on March 15, 2016, as a continuation-in-part of the parent '107 application. This application issued as U.S. Patent 9,973,622.
  • U.S. Application No. 15/979,410: Filed on May 14, 2018, as a continuation of the '736 application. This application issued as U.S. Patent 10,887,445.

Summary of Family Members

Application/Patent No.	Type	Filing Date	Status/Outcome
US 61/835,234	Provisional	June 14, 2013	Expired
US 14/176,107	Non-Provisional (Parent)	February 9, 2014	Published as US 2014/0370857 A1; Abandoned
US 8,958,853	Patent (from 14/515,477)	October 15, 2014	Granted
US 9,973,622	Patent (from 15/070,736)	March 15, 2016	Granted
US 10,887,445	Patent (from 15/979,410)	May 14, 2018	Granted

There are no divisional applications noted in the prosecution history of this patent family. The applicant chose to use continuation and continuation-in-part applications to pursue further claims. All patents in this family share the same projected expiration date of February 9, 2034, as they all derive their priority from the same parent application.