Talk:Sealed crustless sandwich

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Does this ruling [1] affect the original patent?--nixie 08:20, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Not directly, but since they are currently litigating against someone it could be used to make a persuasive case. Anyway, it ought to be in this article! --Fastfission 15:15, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lien Tran

How does the author of the article know that "the patent examiner, Lien Tran, consulted on a minimal amount of prior art: seven previous patents issued between 1963 and 1998, and a 1994 book called 50 Great Sandwiches".

I guess it should read the examiner "cited" a small amount of documents. The number of documents consulted by an examiner is not public. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.145.187.188 (talk) 21:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Dead patent?

You have to be a bit careful about saying that a patent is "dead". Technically, the patent will still be alive, it just won't have any claims, hence it won't cover anything. In this case it certainly appears as if Smuckers has thrown in the towel, but it still is theoretically possible for them to revitalize the reexamiantion proceedings with a petition to the patent office for unintentional or unavoidable delay. see [2] --Nowa 12:21, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

A "continuing patent application" must have a live original or child application pending. A CPA may NOT by filed to extend a re-examination.

"37 CFR 1.53(d)(1) A continuation or divisional application (but not a continuation-in-part) of a prior nonprovisional application may be filed as a continued prosecution application under this paragraph . . ."

Once the last child in a chain issues, the game is over.

There are no pending children applications in this family. It has been more than two years since the original patent issued, therefore, a broadening re-issue cannot be made.

During re-examination, no new claim may be added that has a broader scope than the broadest live claim that is currently in the application. All of the live claims in the application as it stands now are subject to the "not fully compressed" limitation that the BPAI has determined is indefinite. This limitation cannot be removed, even if a petition were granted.

Further, while a petition to revive theoretically might be filed, I'd be thrilled to learn what excuse the PTO might accept after oral argument at the BPAI.

Thus, as a practical matter, it is accurate to say that the patent appears to be dead. Ultimately, once the reexamination certificate issues cancelling all claims, the patent will be dead.

Perhaps they don't need the Ketchum patent anymore. Another sealed crustless sandwich patent application was filed my Smuckers in 2001. A number of continuations have been filed and one of those has issued as U.S. Patent 6,874,409 . At least one child application is still alive. serial number 10/958733 Thusfar this series is only claiming methods and apparati for making the sandwiches. Nonetheless, they could introduce a child application that claims the sandwich itself in a "product by process" claim. Thus they may not be able to get a patent on the Ketchum SCS but the door is open for getting a patent on an improved SCS.--Nowa 02:06, 9 February 2007 (UTC)