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Expired European patentEurope

A technique to count objects in a scanned image

EP 0656938 B1 · Applicant: MINNESOTA MINING AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY

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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 June 14, 1993 and granted October 29, 1997. A European patent lasts at most 20 years from filing, so its term ended June 14, 2013.
  • 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 December 14, 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.
FiledJune 14, 1993
PublishedJune 14, 1995
GrantedOctober 29, 1997
Term endedJune 14, 2013
Application numberEP 93916523
Classification (CPC)C12M41/36 +1 more

Timeline

Timeline From EPO dates

1994199619982000200220042006200820102012Application filedJune 14, 1993PublishedJune 14, 1995Patent grantedOct 29, 1997Term endedJune 14, 2013

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

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