by Dennis Crouch
Congress set the patent term at twenty years from the earliest effective filing date. 35 U.S.C. § 154(a)(2) (not counting provisional or foreign national filing). But that statutory baseline is just the starting point. But, the actual term is shaped by a series of prosecution decisions, USPTO delays, terminal disclaimers, and patent family structure. The chart below shows the distribution of expected remaining patent term (measured from issuance) for utility patents issued between March 2025 and March 2026. The calculation accounts for patent term adjustment (PTA) and terminal disclaimers, though the latter relies on a heuristics and so is not perfectly precise. Still, the overall shape tells a vivid story about what the patent system actually delivers.
The most striking feature is