Every page on this site is computed from public USPTO records by the rules this page sets out. It also states the one rule that protects them: money never changes a fact.
Where the data comes from
Company and patent pages are generated from USPTO bulk data: grant records, the file history of every application, the maintenance fee event history, and assignment records. The site is updated daily, within hours of each file's publication. Every date, status and count on a company or patent page is computed from these records by the rules on this page. Two things are reviewed by hand: company display names, and the few source dates USPTO's records print before 1900, each replaced by a reviewed date or not used.
How a date is computed
A computed expiration date is not a single lookup. It is a base term, adjusted in order for patent term adjustment, any terminal disclaimer, a patent term extension where one was granted, and the fee record. The section "How we calculated this date" on every patent page shows each step that produced its date, not just the result.
Every date shows its work: the base term, any term adjustment or extension, any disclaimer cap, and the maintenance fee record, each with a confidence tier.
Patent term extensions
A patent term extension restores time lost to regulatory review, and is common on drug and device patents and rare everywhere else. We read the extension from the USPTO's own certificate list and add it after any terminal disclaimer cap, which is the order the Federal Circuit settled in Merck v. Hi-Tech Pharmacal. A certificate whose granted period we cannot read from the list is shown as on file and is not added, rather than estimated. Extensions cover the approved product, and pediatric exclusivity is a separate FDA right that is not a patent term and is not included here.
Confidence tiers
Every computed date carries a confidence tier. High means every input resolved from the record. Medium means one input was unresolved, and the date carries a note saying which; a parent application in the chain that we could not resolve is one such input. Low means two or more caveats on the record, whether on one input or several: a lapse the fee record shows but USPTO has not yet posted carries two, since no fee event states it and USPTO's status still reads Patented Case. A date is never shown without its tier.
A confidence tier describes how complete a calculation's inputs are. It is not a legal opinion or a probability that the date is correct.
Patent families
A patent family here is a group of applications linked by USPTO continuity records, with attorney docket numbers as a second, weaker signal that only ever links applications already sharing a recorded party. On a company page the grouping is computed afresh each time the page is published, from that company's own records. A patent page's family box reads a separate index that is rebuilt on its own schedule and does not yet cover every application on this site, so a patent whose family we have not indexed shows no family box rather than a family of one.
How current this is
The line in the footer of every page names the dates it was built from, and they are not the same date. "Updated" is the day this page itself was last published; every page is republished each morning new USPTO data arrives. The site is updated daily, within hours of each USPTO publication. The publication dates are USPTO's own release dates for the newest bulk files this site has ingested, as USPTO's catalogue states them: assignment and status data is published every morning for the previous day, and grant and fee data is published once a week, on Tuesday. On a morning the assignment and status files were published on different days, the line names each. A six-day-old grant date is therefore the normal state of a Monday, not a stall. The records inside those files run through the day before their release, and the footer label states that coverage on hover. Every one of these dates is read from the files themselves, so a day on which a fetch failed shows an older publication date rather than quietly reading as current.
When the record is silent
Where a record is genuinely silent, we say so rather than guess. Older fee histories sometimes carry no fee events at all: that is a data gap, not evidence a patent lapsed, and the page says which. A terminal disclaimer with no resolvable reference document stays uncapped, at reduced confidence, with a note, rather than a guessed cap.
What the numbers count
Patents tracked. One per US patent this site can serve a computed term for: terms computed from the patent's USPTO application file history, and terms computed from USPTO bulk records alone where this site holds no file history. Pending applications are not counted: there is no patent yet and no term to compute.
Company pages. One per company with a compiled page, including the companies served from the database rather than from a published file.
Records. One per application in a company's portfolio. Records do not sum to patents: a portfolio holds applications that never granted, and one patent can be a record of more than one company along an ownership chain.
How companies get added
Added this week counts company pages first published in the seven days ending on the date stamped beneath the homepage's From the record board, whichever job created them: the nightly add batch, or the separation of two companies filed under one name. That stamp is the date this site's records are current to, not today's clock, which is the anchor every computed date here is measured from; a page added after it is counted the following week. It counts a page once, on the day it first appeared, and a page that is later republished is not counted again.
A search matches every assignee and applicant name in the US patent record this site holds, not only the companies with a page. Names are matched with spacing, punctuation, case and legal suffixes set aside, so one company written several ways is one answer: the record spells DuPont nine ways and Solvay three. Every name with a granted patent or a published application has a page. A name the record carries with neither is listed and says so, and a name in no record at all says that instead, with the date it was checked.
Reporting an error
Found an error? Report it to support@thepatentfinder.com and we review it against the source record. Read the corrections process.
Payment or subscription status never changes a public record, a computed value, a ranking, or any independent calculation on this site, and no company can edit a date, a status, or a fact this site computed.