Patents correction

OG/PLUS USPTO Research PubHcations CD-ROM versioa of the USPTO Official Gazette covers 1990—preseat iacludes searchable subfiles PATENTS ISSUED, images of O.G. pages searchable by bibHographic fields and first page abstract PATENT STATUS Ede, track-iag post-issuance actions, eg, reexaminations, corrections and LITALERT, containing records of patent suits filed by U.S. District Courts with the USPTO updated monthly six disks/year... 

In response to the first office action, the appHcant may file a series of amendments (step 6) and should provide substantial reasoning and analysis to explain the reasons that the pubHcation(s) cited by the examiner do(es) not disclose the invention as it has been claimed. The patent appHcant s response should also comply with the examiner s request for correcting formal problems in the appHcation. 

Issuance of a United States patent transforms a patent appHcant into a patentee, and new concerns may arise relevant to management. For example, the patent should be reviewed to determine formal and substantive correctness. An audit should be taken regularly to determine whether there is a continuing justification to pay the maintenance fees required to keep the patent in force during its effective period. The patentee or patent assignee may have to address concerns of patent infringement or patent vaHdity. 

If, upon review of the patent, the patentee discovers that the claims contain a formal error, are too narrow, or are too broad in view of the prior art, the patentee may ask the U.S. PTO to correct this error. There are four administrative vehicles for correcting errors in issued patents. The appHcation of each of these mechanisms is dependent on the nature and severity of the error, as weU as the source of its creation. 

The Notice of Errors. The first mechanism for correction of errors is called a "Notice of Errors." This document may be filed by the patentee after issuance of the patent with the U.S. PTO and references the patent number, issue date, and the errors contained in the patent. The purpose of a Notice of Errors is to clarify the examination history of the patent and such notice dispositively corrects any misspellings, or typographical errors or omissions. One example of a problem which may be clarified by a Notice of Errors is an omitted chemical bond in a compound used in an exemplary embodiment of the invention. In short, the error is obvious and easily corrected. 

The Notice of Errors should resolve those problems which are evident on the face of the patent but which also may be, by their nature, obvious and correctable problems to someone reading only the patent. The Notice of Errors does not result in a further pubHcation by the U.S. PTO, but rather it is instead placed into the examination history of the issued patent and thus is available to anyone who may wish to read this examination history. The Notice of Errors is appropriate for correcting simple matters which do not affect the claim scope or the vaHdity of the patent. 

The Certificate of Correction. Another mechanism for correcting the patent is the "Certificate of Correction," which is essentially a petition filed by the patentee to correct minor errors in the patent produced either by the U.S. PTO or inadvertentiy by the appHcant. Unlike the Notice of Errors, a Certificate of Correction does result in an additional pubHcation from the U.S. PTO, and anyone requesting a copy of a patent in which a Certificate of Correction has been filed will also obtain the Certificate of Correction. A Certificate of Correction reflects amendments made during the examination of the patent which were entered by the examiner but not found within the issued patent. The omission of such amendments can be in the body of the patent or in the patent claims. The Certificate of Correction may also be used to correct errors in the issued patent which were not present in the patent appHcation when it was filed. If the error was caused by the patent appHcant prior to or during examination, the patent appHcant bears the cost of filing and... 

A reissue may be ordered to correct any minor or major mistake which occurred during prosecution of a patent, but the mistake must be one that makes the patent partially or whoUy inoperable. Inoperable essentially means that the patent caimot be enforced. For instance, a reissue proceeding can be used to correct inventorship or even broaden claims if the patent is less than two years old. However, such a request to broaden claims in the context of reissue may not be undertaken to recover subject matter canceled during examination. Further, a reissue proceeding may be undertaken to correct formal problems or address newly discovered prior art which affects the scope of the claims. The nature of a reissue proceeding directs that this mechanism should be used only when the vaUdity of the patent is in question owing to the error or problem in question. 

The time span covered by CLAIMS is unique chemical patents from 1950, nonchemical patents from 1963. The bibhographic information for pre-1970 patents is unfortunately replete with errors, especially with respect to inventor names. On the other hand, lEI has done an admirable job of standardizing patent assignee names and correcting discrepancies and errors in the originals. 

Other expansions of FDA s authority include the Dmg Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, commonly known as the 1984 Amendments or the Waxman-Hatch Act, which was passed to attain quicker marketing of safe, effective, and less expensive generic dmgs and the Safe Medical Device Amendments of 1990, which was passed to correct perceived weaknesses in the implementation of the 1976 Device Amendments. Congress further expanded FDA authority over nutrition labeling and health and nutrient content claims on food labels with the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990. 

Hydrogels, ie, gelatin and agar, have been known for a long time. In the late nineteenth century, Herschel proposed the use of jelly materials on the cornea for the correction of vision (108). In 1960, the use of synthetic hydrogels for contact lenses was proposed and several U.S. patents were obtained for the invention of cross-linked hydrophilic polymers, eg, systems based on 2-hydroxethyl methacrylate [868-77-9] (HEMA) (5) (109—112). 

The following is a copy of the provisional and complete specifications provided by tbe original patentee. The patent has now expired. Further examination of the bodies in question has shown that a few unimportant details require correction —... 

All other approaches try and relate the child spectra to the parent spectra. In the patented method of Shenk and Westerhaus [41 Sh], in its simplest form, one first applies a wavelength correction and then a correction for the absorbance. Each wavelength channel i of the parent instrument is linked to a nearby wavelength channel j(i) in the child instrument, namely the one to which it is maximally correlated. Then, for each pair of wavelengths, i for the parent and j i) for the child, a simple linear regression is carried out, linking the pair of measured absorbances... 

Phenyl-fra-dioxane was obtained by Prins2 by the reaction between styrene and formaldehyde in the presence of sulfuric acid. The correct structure was pointed out by Fourneau, Benoit, and Firmenich.4 The above procedure is essentially that given by Shortridge 6 and by Beets 3 and mentioned in a patent. Methylphenylcarbinol has been substituted for styrene.3... 

One particular standardization method, patented by Shenk and Westerhaus in 1989 [112,117], has seen high utility in NIR food and agricultural apphcations. This method involves a wavelength axis shift correction, followed by an intensity correction. More details on the operation of this method can be found in the literature [112], but its basic operations involve the following ... 

The result of all these experiments was that the idea of a particularly beneficial macro-compact porous state of the catalyst had to be abandoned, although patents had already been filed in which this had been claimed. Instead, we returned still more convinced of its correctness, to the previous more general hypothesis of the desirability of multi-component catalysts. 

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