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Expired European patentEurope

Self-aligned contact studs for semiconductor structures

EP 0540446 B1 · Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation

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Overview

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Listed from its EPO record in Patent Yard's archive of European patents past their term. Its claims, description and drawings are in the EPO PDF and on Google Patents, and the Claude kit works from them.

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Why it's free to use

  • Filed October 9, 1992 and granted July 22, 1998. A European patent lasts at most 20 years from filing, so its term ended October 9, 2012.
  • A supplementary protection certificate, which can extend a medicine or crop-protection patent, adds at most five and a half years, so even that would have ended by April 9, 2018.
  • We check European rights only. A US or other national patent in its family could still be in force: check its family on Espacenet or Google Patents.
FiledOctober 9, 1992
PublishedMay 5, 1993
GrantedJuly 22, 1998
Term endedOctober 9, 2012
Application numberEP 92480146
Classification (CPC)H10W20/42 +2 more

Timeline

Timeline From EPO dates

1993199519971999200120032005200720092011Application filedOct 9, 1992PublishedMay 5, 1993Patent grantedJuly 22, 1998Term endedOct 9, 2012

Sources & verification

Official EPO records

Full published documentClaims, description and drawings as a PDF.EPOEuropean Patent RegisterProcedure, status, file inspection and legal events.EPOLinked open EP data recordThe bibliographic record this page is built from.EPO

Cross-check elsewhere

Google PatentsFull text, worldwide family, citing patents and legal events.patents.google.comEspacenetNational family members and their legal status.European Patent Office

Everything on this page comes from the EPO record linked above. EPO data used under CC BY 4.0.