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Adjustments, Extensions, Disclaimers, And Continuations: When Do Patent Term Adjustments Make Sense?, Stephanie Plamondon Bair

Stephanie Bair

The United States patent system represents a measured trade-off between two competing policy considerations: providing sufficient incentives to encourage the innovation and development of new and socially useful inventions; and ensuring that such inventions are readily available to the public at an affordable price. Although the default patent term is now twenty years from filing, various features of, and changes to, the patent system over the years have allowed patent owners to extend the duration of their patent monopolies, sometimes for several years. Such extensions, though seemingly insignificant when compared to the full patent term, have an enormous impact on …