Why are there two patents with same title

Hi, Why are there two patents with same title?

What are their major purposes?

For example: Altera patents:

6,859,065 Use of dangling partial lines for interfacing in a PLD 6,653,862 Use of dangling partial lines for interfacing in a PLD

In the latest patent, it contains the following statements:

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.

10/140,911 filed on May 6, 2002, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,653,862, which claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/289,346, filed May 6, 2001, and entitled "Use of Dangling Partial lines for Interfacing in a PLD."

Thank you.

Weng

Reply to
Weng Tianxiang
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The first claim in 6,859,065 is:

A programmable logic device (PLD), comprising:

a plurality of logic elements (LE's) arranged in an array;

a signal routing architecture including a plurality of signal routing lines to route signals among the LE's; and

a plurality of signal drivers along each of the signal routing lines,

wherein

for each of the signal routing lines, [*]

the drivers along that signal routing line are spaced along that signal routing line; [**]

for each of a first set of at least some of the signal routing lines,

that signal routing line is substantially interrupted by an interface region such that a partial signal routing line is formed for that signal routing line between the interface region and a driver along that signal routing line from the interface region; and

the PLD further comprises an input driver configured to drive from the interface region along the partial signal routing line formed for that signal routing line.

In patent 6,653,862 the first claim is the same except it also includes

  • that signal routing line has an integer N associated with the signal routing line;

and

** at an interval of N LE's for that line;

So the first claim of the '065 patent is broader than the first claim of the '862 patent.

Reply to
mr_reznat

Hi, Thank you very much.

You means if two patents have same titles, usually the later one contains claims broader than ones claimed in the first patent to expand their patent right coverage.

  1. Are there any other situations that trigger the repeated patent with same title as previous one? Because I found it is very common to have two patents having the same titles.

  1. Is it right that It seems the lawyer who wrote the claims for first patent and missed something is at the fault? May it double the money to support two patents for a long term period?

Now I have a question: If a provisional application for patent A that contains patent B partial new material is filed earlier than provisional application for patent B, can I use the continuation-in-part to claim priority data of patent A for patent B? Or I will lose the right for patent B that is disposed earlier in patent A application?

What is the best strategy for two provisional patent applications that have overlapped materials to file with the larger one being ready first.

Weng

Reply to
Weng Tianxiang

Note that the way the US does patents is different from much of the rest of the world so answers may depend on what you want to file and where.

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Dave
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Reply to
Dave {Reply Address in.sig}

First, I am not a lawyer, and I don't know what I am talking about.

Patents can have any title they like. Sometimes they are descriptive of the patent contents, and sometimes they are deliberately poor to make searches fail. Usually they are descriptive.

There are many reasons for apparently duplicated effort. You need to study the claims section carefully to see how they differ.

I believe that patents can be described as "method patents" and "means patents". Sometimes the claims are combined in one patent and sometimes they are separate patents.

After filing a patent, the engineering continues. If additional ideas are developed, or better implementations discovered, then a follow on patent may be filed to cover the new material.

To protect intellectual property.

A means patent covers the mechanisms or structures needed to implement the patent. A methods patend covers how the means are applied to achieve the goal of the patent. (I may be totally screwed up on this).

This may be an example of the "additional ideas". I have not looked at the patents you reference.

Philip

Reply to
Philip Freidin

One common situation where patents have duplicate titles is simply that the patents cover (in a very general sense) similar subject matter. For example if you and I were independently working on ergonomic keyboard, there would be nothing unusual that we both file patent applications with the title "Ergonomic Keyboard."

A second reason is that a patent application may spawn several patents. For example, if I apply for a patent on my ergonomic keyboard and half the claims are allowed, I may choose to go ahead and pay the fees and have the patent granted; meanwhile I could file a continuation application and pursue the remaining claims. It is likely that both patents would have the same title.

Regarding the cases you cited, it is possible that the lawyer erred, more likely however the client and the lawyer decided to take what the patent office offered, and have a first patent issue. The client and lawyer would have also agreed to file an additional application. Yes, multiple patents generally cost more than a single patent, but it still may be good business strategy to go for multiple patents. In some cases the patent office requires that only one set of claims be examined, if you want the other claims you have to file another application; which is likely to have the same title.

If you want to know more about what happened with those particular patents go to

formatting link
, and look up the prosecution history.

This answer to your question about when to file a provisional / regular application and if a c-i-p make sense depends on the details of the situation. One strategy is to file a provisional application with information X as soon as you can write a good description. When information Y becomes available, then file a provisional with a description of X+Y. When you have information Z, then file a provisional application with X+Y+Z. You just have to keep in mind that provisional applications lapse after one year. So if you wait to file a regular application for X until more than 1 year after filing provisional X, then you have to rely on the priority date of the X+Y provisional application(assuming that less than one year has passed since filing provisional X+Y).

All of the above is a general discussion of U.S. patent law, and not intended as legal advice for any particular situation.

Richard

Reply to
mr_reznat

I haven't looked at those two patents, but it's common for this to happen. A patent application will be split into two or more parts, because the patent examiners think that there are independently patentable concepts involved.

I've seen one that was split into many pieces of which more than a dozen were actually issued as patents, all with the same title.

If you want to know the difference between the two, you'll have to compare the claims.

Reply to
Eric Smith

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