Not necessarily. 20 years from application only just became the law. Compuserve would have been working under 17 years from grant. And, IIRC, they could have be

Not necessarily. 20 years from application only just became the law. Compuserve would have been working under 17 years from grant. And, IIRC, they could have been evil and kept filing follow-on claims to delay grant until a time they though was advantageous (e.g. waiting until after Amazon became big). You'd think that's crazy, but the universal search patent Apple is bedeviling Android with has a priority date that goes all the way back to 2000 (this is why Google Desktop Search is not the vaporizing prior art it should be), but wasn't actually issued until December 27, 2011! And if I understand the rules correctly, absent successful invalidation that means we're stuck with Apple "owning" universal search until almost 2029. See: http://www.google.com/patents/US8086604 http://www.google.com/patents/US8086604