A patent application that I filed in July 2010 was issued as a patent in August 2013. There is a feature that was disclosed in the specification and not claimed in the issued patent.
How can I claim this feature now?
asked Feb 6, 2014 at 4:00
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2 Answers
The best way to claim an unclaimed aspect of an application is in a divisional or continuation application. Unfortunately they need to be filed during the pendency of a parent application. Since that wasn't done there are other possibilities. If the original application was not published and nothing was sold or made public before the patent issued, then you have until August 2014 to file a new application (can be just like the orig. but with different claims). Your own work can't be used against you until it has been "out" for a year. If it was published or otherwise made public or sold then you have until a year from that point.
answered Feb 6, 2014 at 19:16
I agree with George, the best thing to do is to maintain a pending continuation patent application, which allows you the ability to continue to mine the specification for additional claims.
As it sounds like you may have mistakenly claimed less than you believe you were entitled to claim, at this point, one option might be to consider filing a reissue application. See MPEP Chapter 1400 ==> http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/mpep-1400.html
