Priority Dates

PMC Patents will not Begin to Expire Until 2027
All 55 recently issued PMC patents have a priority date of either 1981 or 1987. The long gap between the priority date and the issue date stems largely from procedural delays by the Patent and Trademark Office, including the reexamination of seven related patents. All or most of the claims of all but one of the reexamined patents were upheld.

The patents were put into reexam by defendants in the course of infringement suits filed against them by PMC. PMC’s patents will expire 17 years from issuance. As a result of the delay, PMC’s recently issued patents will remain active until 2027 or 2028.

For a defendant the principal attribute of a reexamination is delay of any underlying infringement litigation for those patents under review. However, if patent claims are upheld, the patents emerge stronger and more valuable. In this case, the delay caused by the reexaminations also has delayed the term of PMC’s recently issued patents.

Eight-Year Delay
A delay of two pending litigations was the immediate result of the reexamination proceedings initiated against PMC by defendants Thomson and Scientific Atlanta. However, procedural delays also produced a silver lining for PMC, a family-owned business which the principal inventor, John Harvey, founded in 1981. This resulted in stronger and more thoroughly-vetted patents – the opposite of what the defendants had hoped for.

See Reexaminations under Litigation for more information.