Quote Originally Posted by DizneyFreak2002 View Post


Gotcha... I studied this in college, but geez, that was back in 1992-1993 LOL... I have forgotten all I learned, plus, I never did go into the patent, trademark, and copyright legal field, though I should have... Very interesting field...

Question: how fast are patents approved? Disney filed this in 2011, which protects them from filing date, correct? And only can be seen by the public once published? There is no way for the general public to find these filed patents prior to publishing, right?
You are correct that an application is not made public until it is published (so no, there is no way for the general public to see applications before they are published applications). One is protected from the filing date (or priority date, i.e. provisional application or foreign filing).

I looked this patent application up in private PAIR and what's interesting is that this application was just patented on February 19th!

The patent number is 8,375,864. They received 2 official actions and received their notice of allowance. Usually the process takes years due to delays by the patent office. I guess the art unit (technology division) that this application was assigned to was not backlogged because this went through very quickly (as in it had just published a few weeks before it was patented!).

Some cases I have worked on have taken two years to receive a first office action (and have taken 3 or so years to get a patent issued; very long and expensive process)! So, Bravo Disney and the USPTO!