Remaining term: what 2035, 2037 and 2041 mean

By Hemant K. Rohera — ORCID 0009-0005-3275-1743
Published 20 September 2026 · Last updated 20 September 2026

The three granted United States patents in this portfolio carry expiry dates of 2035, 2037 and 2041 on the public record. A remaining term is one of the few genuinely quantitative things about a patent, and it is the first number a licensee looks for — so it is worth stating precisely, and worth being equally precise about what it does not establish.

The dates on the record

These are the expiry dates as printed on the public record for each grant, and each grant is shown there as active. They are quoted, not calculated.

Why the dates sit where they do

A United States utility patent runs twenty years from its earliest effective non-provisional filing date — for a patent that entered the national phase from an international application, that is the international filing date, not the grant date. So the expiry is set by when the application was filed, and a patent granted later does not run longer.

That is why the eMedica grant has the longest term despite being the most recent grant: it was filed in 2020, five years after the Hybrid Power Pack. It is also why the gap between grant and expiry differs so much across the three. The Hybrid Power Pack was filed in 2015 and granted in 2019, so four of its twenty years had already run at grant. The printed dates also reflect any term adjustment applied by the office for prosecution delay, which is why they fall on specific days rather than on filing anniversaries.

The practical consequence for a licensee: the clock on a patent family starts at filing, so the useful question is never "how new is this grant" but "how much term is left". On this portfolio the answer differs by roughly five and a half years between the shortest and the longest.

Term is per jurisdiction, and it is conditional

Two qualifications that any diligence exercise will apply, so they are stated here rather than found later.

Each family member has its own term and its own status. The dates above are the United States positions. A family member granted in another jurisdiction runs on that office's own calculation and lapses on that office's own rules. Nothing on this page should be read as a statement about any non-US member. The per-jurisdiction position, with grant numbers and dates, is on the patent register, and any member whose current status is not confirmed from the register itself is simply not listed there.

A term only runs while annuities are paid. Remaining term is the maximum available life, not a guarantee. Every jurisdiction requires periodic maintenance or renewal fees, and a missed payment can end a right years before its nominal expiry. This is a real administrative burden on a portfolio held by an individual rather than by a corporate IP function, and it is a fair thing for a counterparty to ask about.

What a remaining term does not tell you

It tells you how long the exclusivity could last. It tells you nothing about how valuable that exclusivity is.

Term says nothing about the breadth of the claims, and a narrow claim with a long life may be easier to design around than a broad claim with a short one. It says nothing about validity, which is only ever tested when someone challenges it. It says nothing about freedom to operate, since a granted patent is a right to exclude others and not a right to practise the invention oneself. And it says nothing at all about whether the technology works, whether a benefit has been demonstrated, or whether a market exists — those need evidence of their own, which is the subject of the published technical notes rather than of the register.

A long remaining term on a portfolio held cleanly by its inventor is a good starting position for a licensing conversation. It is a starting position, not a conclusion.

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