The original patent on omeprazole, the active chemical in Prilosec, ran out on Oct. 5.

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Sealed Air constantly works on bettering Bubble Wrap (the original patent lasted until 1985, thanks to revisions).

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The original patent was filed after work done on text based information systems such as Prestel by the General Post Office (GPO).

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It also says that extra patents it filed after the original patent on Prilosec should extend its ownership of the drug by several years.

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There are 800 miniature facsimiles of various inventors' dreams, once required by the U.S. Patent Office, all equipped with their original patent tags, attached by tiny bits of government-issued red ribbon.

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The PTO regulations demand that the patent owner not only submit the information for supplemental examination by the PTO, but also lay out in detail why the information might potentially invalidate the original patent.

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The original M-16 patent ran out years ago, and now the AR-15 is manufactured by several gunmakers.

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Their foes counter that the patent system's original intention was to make inventions available to the public by conferring temporary rights on the inventor but requiring that details are disclosed so that further innovation can take place.

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Jack's Stir Brew Coffee opens a new location on Sixth Avenue at Downing Street next month, reviving bragging rights over a plaque that hangs in its original West 10th Street location: a patent by owner Jack Mazzola Jr.

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Apple first filed the patent in early June 2007, before the original iPhone had even marched into a retailer -- display technology has come a long way since then.

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Pratibha Singh, a lawyer for the Indian generic drug manufacturer Cipla, which makes a version of Glivec for less than a tenth of the original drug's selling price, said the court ruled that a patent could only be given to a new drug, and not to those which are only slightly different from the original.

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An interesting precedent will be provided by the outcome of a pending Nintendo patent application regarding methods for MMOG players to collectively alter a virtual environment without directly interacting with each other. (In filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office during 2012, Nintendo has substantially narrowed the claims with respect to those in the original 2010 application.) Nintendo, of course, is a game company, not an individual player.

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