question: How come patented things say "patent pending" on them?
comment: That means they have applied for a patent, but it hasn't been granted yet, so they don't have a patent number to list.
passages: Patent pending
  
  "Patent pending" (sometimes abbreviated by "pat. pend." or "pat. pending") or "patent applied for" are legal designations or expressions that can be used in relation to a product or process once a patent application for the product or process has been filed, but prior to the patent being issued or the application abandoned. The marking serves to notify the public, business, or potential infringers who would copy the invention that they may be liable for damages (including back-dated royalties), seizure, and injunction once a patent is issued.
   In Australia, the preferred marking is "Aust. Pat. App. No. yyyynnnnnn" where "yyyy" is the four-digit year of the application and "nnnnnn" is the six-digit number allocated by the Australian Patent Office.
  
  There are penalties for making a false indication of the existence of patent rights for any invention.
  
  Section::::Legislation.:United States.
  
  In the United States, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the expression "Patent Pending" as such does not protect an invention until the actual patent is published and/or issued: 
   In Australia, according to IP Australia, the term "patent pending" refers to an invention in respect of which a patent application has been filed at the patent office but for which a patent has not necessarily been granted. The marking of an article has a legal effect under Section 123 of the Patents Act 1990 with the result that a defendant is taken to be aware of the existence of patent rights.
   The application also includes one or more claims that define what a patent covers or the "scope of protection".
  
  After filing, an application is often referred to as "patent pending". While this term does not confer legal protection, and a patent cannot be enforced until granted, it serves to provide warning to potential infringers that if the patent is issued, they may be liable for damages.
   The expression "patent pending" is a warning that an alleged invention is the subject of a patent application. The term may be used to mark products containing the invention to alert a third party to the fact that the third party may be infringing a patent if the product is copied after the patent is granted. The rules on the use of the term to mark products vary among patent offices, as do the benefits of such marking. In general, it is permissible to apply the term patent pending to a product if there is, in fact, a patent pending for any invention implemented in the product.
   A provisional application, like any other patent application, also allows the applicant to use the term "patent pending".
  
  Section::::In popular culture.
  
  Numerous characters have assumed the name Pat Pending since at least the 1960s, notably Professor Pat Pending of cartoon series Wacky Races; the name has appeared in at least 21 comics as well as the original Batman series where J. Pat O'Malley played a prolific and rich yet cheap inventor "Pat Pending" in two episodes, likely capitalizing on the marking present on goods throughout the United States.
  
  Section::::See also.
  
  BULLET::::- Backlog of unexamined patent applications
  
  BULLET::::- Provisional rights
   Section::::Preparation, filing, and prosecution.:Priority claim.
  
  A patent application may claim priority from one or more previously filed applications to take advantage of the filing date of these earlier applications (in respect of the information contained in these earlier applications). Claiming priority is desirable because the earlier effective filing date reduces the number of prior art disclosures, increasing the likelihood of obtaining a patent.
   It is typical for a patent office to treat its own patents and published patent applications as prior art as of their filing dates, although under the European Patent Convention, this applies only to novelty rather than inventive step. However, United States patent law before the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) included the Hilmer doctrine, under which United States patents and patent application publications were prior art only as of their earliest effective United States filing dates, i.e., disregarding any foreign priority claimed in those patents and patent application publications. The AIA has abolished the Hilmer doctrine and makes United States patents and patent application publications that name another inventor prior art as of when they were "effectively filed."
   Fraudulent use of a patent pending designation is prohibited by the law of many countries and inventors should be cautious when marking products or methods that may arguably not be covered by any pending patent application. In some jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, a warning notice should ideally mention the number of the pending application.
  
  Section::::Legislation.
  
  Section::::Legislation.:Australia.
   In certain states, most notably the United States, actions during prosecution can estop a party from certain later actions or assertions.
  
  Section::::P.:Provisional application.
  
  In United States patent law, a legal document filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that establishes an early filing date, but which does not mature into an issued patent unless the applicant files a regular patent application within one year. See also Non-provisional patent application.
  
  Section::::P.:Provisional (patent) rights or provisional protection.
   Term of patent in the United States
  
  In the United States, under current patent law, the term of patent, provided that maintenance fees are paid on time, is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest U.S. or international (PCT) application to which priority is claimed (excluding provisional applications).
   The first of those—the request for a legal privilege to which the applicant is entitled if the application is well founded—is temporal by its nature. It ceases to exist as soon as the application is withdrawn or refused, or a patent is granted. The informational content of the document as filed (or in other, prosaic words, the piece of paper), is a historical fact that persists and exists in perpetuity. The expression "application" is often employed without being conscious of its ambiguity. The expression is capable of misleading even experienced professionals.
  
  Section::::Geographic scope.
   A terminal disclaimer is a process by which a patent's term is shortened because it duplicates the claims of another patent which expires sooner. If any claim of a pending patent application would have been obvious in light of at least one claim of the applicant's issued patents, the USPTO may reject that claim for obviousness-type double patenting and require the applicant to disclaim a part of the term of the pending application. For example, an applicant's patent A expires on December 24, 2000. The applicant filed another patent application two years later. Under some conditions, the second patent might expire later than the first (based upon the respective earliest claimed priority dates). If the applicant is required to file, and does file, a terminal disclaimer in the later filed patent, then the later filed patent will expire at the same time as the earlier filed patent, the extra term having been disclaimed ("terminal disclaimer"). In filing the terminal disclaimer, the later filed patent and the earlier filed patent must be, and remain, commonly owned. In the case of co-pending applications, either or both of the applications may have claims rejected for obviousness-type double patenting, and a terminal disclaimer may be required in either or both, in which case the earlier expiration date will control.
   The date of issue effectively terminates prosecution of a specific application, after which continuing applications cannot be filed, and establishes the date upon which infringement may be charged. Furthermore, an issue date for an application in the U.S. filed prior to 1995 also factors into the term of the patent, whereas the term of later filings is determined solely by the filing date.
  
  Section::::Preparation, filing, and prosecution.:Post-issue or grant.
   As of the 1999 American Inventors Protection Act, however, most patent applications filed in the US have been published 18 months after they were filed. These published patent applications serve a similar purpose to a statutory invention registration. Once an application is published, an inventor need only let their application go abandoned in order to give up their right to a patent and dedicate the invention to the public.
   Priority is determined by order of applications, thus a prior application will bar a subsequent one. This "first to file" approach is used globally. Although previously holding to its first to invent system,the United States, switched on March 16, 2013 after the enactment of the America Invents Act (see "First to file and first to invent"). An earlier application that remains secret because it is abandoned or withdrawn before being published does not constitute disclosure.
  
  Section::::Non-obviousness.
   The filing date of a patent application is the date the patent application was filed in one or more patent offices, i.e. the date on which that application is legally accepted at the patent office. That date is typically the date on which the documents are deposited at the office, but may be later if there are defects in the documents. See also Priority right.
   For example, if a subsequently filed patent application is filed in Canada within 12 months of the earliest date on which any corresponding previously regularly filed application was filed in Canada, or in any country belonging to the Paris Convention, or in any World Trade Organization (WTO) member country, the subsequently filed patent application can request priority back to the date of filing the earlier filed foreign or domestic patent application, effectively, for the purposes of determining patentability of the invention in the subsequently filed patent application, giving the subsequently filed patent application the filing date of the earlier filed foreign or domestic patent application to the extent that the claimed subject matter of the subsequently filed patent application overlaps with the disclosed subject matter of the earlier filed foreign or domestic patent application.
   The earliest filing date of a "provisional" (application) may be very important where, for example, a statutory condition of patentability is about to expire and there is insufficient time to generate a complete non-provisional application. In many cases, a provisional is filed the same day as a public disclosure of the invention, which disclosure could otherwise permanently jeopardize the patentability in non-U.S. countries having strict requirements on "complete or absolute novelty". In other cases the provisional application is filed soon after such a disclosure in order to preserve only the inventor's U.S. patent rights.
   During the prosecution of a continuation application, the applicant may not add additional disclosure to the specification. If the inventor needs to supplement the disclosure of the earlier parent application, he has to file a continuation-in-part application.
  
  Section::::Current law in the U.S..:Request for continued examination.
  
  In the typical case, a patent examiner will examine patent claims and amendments in an original patent application for two rounds of "office actions" before ending examination. However, often two office actions are not enough to resolve all of the issues in the patent prosecution.
   BULLET::::- Type B - USPTO estimates the normal prosecution period of an application to be 3 years, i.e. between the date of filing of the application and the issue of the patent .If the prosecution exceeds this time, then Type B delay come into place.Type B delay will calculated if no RCE (Request For Continued Examination) is filed Prior to completion of 3-year period.If the first RCE is filed after 3-year period then type B delay will be calculated up to the date of filing of RCE.
   The same term is used in past and current patent laws of other countries with different meanings.
  
  Section::::History.
   A provisional application, as such, is never examined by the USPTO, and therefore will never become a patent on its own (unless the provisional patent application is later converted into a non-provisional patent application by the applicant, and then the application is examined as a non-provisional application). The provisional application is also not "published", but becomes a part of any later non-provisional application file that references it, and thus becomes "public" upon issuance of a patent claiming its priority benefit.
   The European Patent Convention requires all jurisdictions to give a European patent a term of 20 years from the actual date of filing an application for a European patent or the actual date of filing an international application under the PCT designating the EPO. The actual date of filing can be up to a year after the earliest priority date. The term of a granted European patent may be extended under national law if national law provides term extension to compensate for pre-marketing regulatory approval. For EEA member states this is by means of a supplementary protection certificate.
  
  Section::::Jurisdiction.:United States.
   Patent applications are generally published 18 months after the earliest priority date of the application. Prior to that publication the application is confidential to the patent office. After publication, depending upon local rules, certain parts of the application file may remain confidential, but it is common for all communications between an Applicant (or his agent) and the patent office to be publicly available.
  
  The publication of a patent application marks the date at which it is publicly available and therefore at which it forms full prior art for other patent applications worldwide.
  
  Section::::Preparation, filing, and prosecution.:Patent pending.
  
raw_presuppositions: Things that say "patent pending" are already patented.
raw_corrections: Things that say "patent pending" are not already patented, but have a patent applied for.