Optical pickup and optical element used therefor

Read the whole patent

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.

Why it's free to use

• Filed February 20, 1997 and granted April 23, 2003. A European patent lasts at most 20 years from filing, so its term ended February 20, 2017.
• 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 August 20, 2022.
• 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.