Looking at Patent Law: A Case Study Regarding the Patenting of a Plating Cell Invention

摘要

Recall from our previous article,1 the prosecution history of a patent application is publically available in the file wrapper on the USPTO Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system and is the basis for this case study.2 We chose this invention as particularly illustrative of a diverse number of prosecution "events" an inventor may encounter during the prosecution of their inventions. Table I summarizes this journey from the initial documentation and filing of the invention, through various interactions with the USPTO, to the issue of four separate but related patents. As noted in the legend of Table I, we use four different colors to highlight the events related to the four patents which issued from the single patent application.