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Expired European patentEurope

Apparatus for marking tissue

EP 0873091 B1 · Applicant: ETHICON ENDO-SURGERY, INC.

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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.

Why it's free to use

  • Filed July 31, 1997 and granted May 21, 2003. A European patent lasts at most 20 years from filing, so its term ended July 31, 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 January 31, 2023.
  • 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.
FiledJuly 31, 1997
PublishedOctober 28, 1998
GrantedMay 21, 2003
Term endedJuly 31, 2017
Application numberEP 97936328
Classification (CPC)A61B90/39 +2 more

Timeline

Timeline From EPO dates

1998200020022004200620082010201220142016Application filedJuly 31, 1997PublishedOct 28, 1998Patent grantedMay 21, 2003Term endedJuly 31, 2017

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