Extensions

Patent Term Adjustments (PTA)

Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) can extend the term of a U.S. patent to compensate for delays caused by the USPTO during the patent prosecution process. The total PTA is added to the standard 20-year lifespan of a utility or plant patent.

To determine the exact PTA for RE48633, an official record from the USPTO, such as the Issue Notification Letter, would be required. The USPTO calculates the PTA at the time of patent issuance. Based on the issue date of June 16, 2020, and the initial application filing date of September 14, 2018 (for the reissue application RE48633), or the earliest priority date of June 22, 2010 (for the original application U.S. 12/820,436), the calculation of PTA would involve assessing various delays by the USPTO, such as failure to:

• Issue a first Office Action within 14 months of filing.
• Respond to an applicant's reply within four months.
• Issue the patent within four months of payment of the issue fee.
• Issue the patent within three years of the actual filing date (with some provisos).

Applicant-caused delays can reduce the PTA. Since RE48633 is a reissue patent, the PTA would have been determined for the original patent and potentially recalculated for the reissue based on the reissue application's prosecution history.

Patent Term Extensions (PTE)

Patent Term Extensions (PTE) are separate from PTA and primarily apply to patents covering new drugs, biologics, or medical devices, compensating for time lost during regulatory review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The maximum PTE is five years, and the total patent term with extension cannot exceed 14 years from the FDA approval date.

Given that RE48633 is titled "System and method for creating and managing a virtualized computing system" and relates to cloud computing, it is highly unlikely to be eligible for a Patent Term Extension under 35 U.S.C. § 156, as it does not appear to cover a product subject to FDA regulatory review.

Continuation and Divisional Applications

RE48633 is a reissue patent of U.S. Patent No. 8,271,974. A reissue patent itself is a re-examination of an existing patent to correct errors, not a new application in the sense of a continuation or divisional.

The concept of continuation and divisional applications typically applies to utility patents stemming from an original non-provisional application.

• Continuation applications are filed during the pendency of an earlier non-provisional application, claiming the same invention.
• Divisional applications are filed when an earlier application is determined to contain more than one independent and distinct invention.

While a continuation or divisional reissue application can be filed, these are specific procedures for reissue patents. A review of the USPTO records for RE48633 does not indicate any pending continuation or divisional applications directly stemming from RE48633 itself. However, the patent is a reissue of US Patent No. 8,271,974. The original application from which both the '974 patent and subsequently RE48633 derive is U.S. 12/820,436, filed on June 22, 2010.

Related Family Members

RE48633 is a reissue of US Patent No. 8,271,974.

• Parent Patent: U.S. Patent No. 8,271,974, titled "System and method for creating and managing a virtualized computing system," issued on September 18, 2012, from U.S. Application No. 12/820,436.
• Grandparent Patent: U.S. Patent No. 9,043,751, titled "System and method for creating and managing a virtualized computing system," issued on May 26, 2015, also from U.S. Application No. 12/820,436, which suggests the original application may have been involved in further prosecution or divisional filings not immediately apparent from the RE48633 record alone. The prior litigation summary explicitly notes that both 9,043,751 and 8,271,974 are parent patents and were asserted by Kaavo Inc.

Therefore, the direct family members include:

• RE48633 (Reissue patent)
• U.S. Patent No. 8,271,974 (Original patent reissued by RE48633)
• U.S. Patent No. 9,043,751 (Related patent from the same initial application family)
• U.S. Application No. 12/820,436 (Original application leading to the '974 and '751 patents)

Projected Expiration Date

The term of a U.S. patent (excluding design patents) issued from applications filed on or after June 8, 1995, is generally 20 years from the earliest filing date for which a benefit is claimed under 35 U.S.C. § 120, § 121, or § 365(c).

For RE48633, the earliest effective filing date is June 22, 2010, which is the filing date of the original application U.S. 12/820,436, from which U.S. Patent No. 8,271,974 (the patent reissued by RE48633) claims priority.

Therefore, the base expiration date for RE48633 would be 20 years from June 22, 2010.

Base Expiration Date: June 22, 2010 + 20 years = June 22, 2030.

This date would then be adjusted by any Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) granted during the prosecution of the original patent and the reissue application. As the exact PTA for RE48633 is not publicly available without direct access to the USPTO's Private PAIR system or the Issue Notification Letter, a definitive projected expiration date including PTA cannot be provided at this time. However, the USPTO generally includes the PTA calculation in the Issue Notification Letter.

Assuming no PTA and no terminal disclaimers, the projected expiration date would be June 22, 2030. If there was PTA, it would extend this date. For example, if there were 500 days of PTA, the expiration date would be June 22, 2030, plus 500 days.

It's important to note that the USPTO does not calculate expiration dates for patents for the public, but provides a calculator to help estimate them.