Fee Status Table

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Table Structure

       Table "public.feestatus"
Column  |       Type        | Modifiers 
--------+-------------------+-----------
patent  | character varying | 
four    | text              | 
eight   | text              | 
twelve  | text              | 
feedate | date              | 

Example of table entries:

patent  | four | eight | twelve |  feedate   
--------+------+-------+--------+------------
4374868 |      | 3     |        | 1990-02-22
4650733 | 3    |       |        | 1990-03-19
4652595 | 3    |       |        | 1990-03-26
4653228 | 2    |       |        | 1990-04-02
4379068 |      | 3     |        | 1990-04-05
4654509 | 2    |       |        | 1990-04-07
4531477 |      | 2     |        | 1990-05-07
4386763 |      | 2     |        | 1990-06-07
4679810 | 3    |       |        | 1990-07-16
4680106 | 3    |       |        | 1990-07-16
4399936 |      | 3     |        | 1990-08-23
4690471 | 3    |       |        | 1990-09-04
4692571 | 3    |       |        | 1990-09-10
4403386 |      | 2     |        | 1990-09-13
4693634 | 3    |       |        | 1990-09-17

Table Variables

Patent represents the patent number of each patent in question. Maintenance fees are paid in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth years of patent ownership. The feedate is the date each fee payment was received by the USPTO. Fees amounts vary between large, small, and micro firms as defined by the USPTO after the America Invents Act was enacted. [1] 3 corresponds to a large firm. 2 corresponds to a small firm. 1 corresponds to a micro firm.

A firm's status is often not the same for every patent it owns. Additionally, a firm's small or micro entity status may change in between maintenance fee patents. This change may be due to licensing and sharing patent interests with firms that do not also identify as small or micro or superseding firm size limits defined by the Code of Federal Regulations. Occasionally, a firm will pay two fees on the same day, typically due to having paid an earlier fee late.

Table Purpose

For the Little Guy Academic Paper, the fee status a firm asserts for a patent identifies the firms that may be used to study the disadvantages small firms face in patent litigation. Based on this table, if a firm identifies as a small or micro firm at any given point for at least one of its patents, it will be treated as such in our study. The fee status table will also help confirm whether a patent is no longer in effect.

Current Problems

There are no current issues with the fee status table.