Extensions

Analysis of U.S. Patent 9,507,477

Date of Analysis: 2026-05-13

This report details the prosecution history and term data for U.S. Patent No. 9,507,477 (the '477 patent).

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Patent Term and Expiration

• Patent Term Adjustments (PTA): There are no recorded Patent Term Adjustments (PTA) for the '477 patent. PTA is granted to compensate for certain delays caused by the USPTO during the patent prosecution process. The absence of PTA indicates that the prosecution timeline did not trigger any statutory provisions for such an extension.

• Patent Term Extensions (PTE): There are no recorded Patent Term Extensions (PTE) for the '477 patent. PTE is typically granted for patents covering products that undergo a lengthy pre-market regulatory review process (e.g., by the Food and Drug Administration) and is not applicable to this technology.

• Projected Expiration Date: A U.S. utility patent filed after June 8, 1995, generally has a term of 20 years from the earliest non-provisional filing date. The '477 patent claims priority from Japanese Patent Application JP 2010-126877, filed on June 2, 2010. Its U.S. application (No. 13/151,362, which led to a parent patent) was filed on April 22, 2015. However, the critical date for term calculation is the earliest claimed priority date.

  The application that matured into the '477 patent (U.S. Application No. 15/005,737) is a continuation of U.S. Application No. 14/254,926, which is itself a continuation of U.S. Application No. 13/151,362 (now U.S. Patent 8,704,762). This chain of applications ultimately claims priority to the Japanese application filed on June 2, 2010.

  Therefore, the 20-year term is calculated from this earliest priority date.

  Projected Expiration: June 2, 2030.

  This date is subject to the timely payment of all required maintenance fees, which are due at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after the grant date.

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Continuity and Family Data

The '477 patent is part of a larger family of applications, indicating a continued prosecution strategy by the applicant to protect variations or improvements of the core invention.

• Continuation Applications:

  • The application for the '477 patent, Ser. No. 15/005,737, filed on January 25, 2016, is a Continuation of Ser. No. 14/254,926, filed on April 17, 2014.
  • Application Ser. No. 14/254,926 is, in turn, a Continuation of Ser. No. 13/151,362, filed on June 2, 2011 (now issued as U.S. Patent No. 8,704,762).

• Divisional Applications: No divisional applications have been identified for this patent family. Divisional applications are typically filed when an original application is found to contain more than one distinct invention.

• Patent Family Members:

  • Direct Parent: U.S. Patent No. 8,704,762 (Application No. 13/151,362). This is the direct predecessor from which the continuation series leading to the '477 patent began.
  • Foreign Priority: The entire U.S. patent family claims priority to Japanese Patent Application No. 2010-126877, filed on June 2, 2010. This is the foundational application that establishes the priority date for the invention.

The use of continuation applications allowed the applicant to pursue different sets of claims based on the original disclosure, a common practice in U.S. patent law. The continuity data confirms that the effective filing date for assessing the '477 patent's term and for prior art purposes is the date of the earliest Japanese filing.