Patent Lies

I was just ‘news-lettered’ by sciencemeetsbusiness.com.au

And right up front I read “A patent is a right granted for a device, substance, method or process that is new, inventive and useful when compared with what is already known. It gives researchers an exclusive right to commercially exploit an invention.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh so wrong.

A patent gives the patent owner (which is rarely the researcher) an option to sue a third party that has commercialised a product or a service that they (the patent owner) believes reads onto the claims in their patent.

Additionally, more often than not an invention can’t be safely commercialised (free from the risk of being sued for patent infringement) unless licenses to other inventions owned by third parties are also secured.

Plus the invention has to be ‘not obvious to someone practised in the art’ in order to get granted in the first place.

Two interesting data points for you to consider:

1. In Australia more than 80% of patent owners that are aware of potential infringement by third parties do nothing about it because it costs too much time and money to take these cases to court compared to the minuscule benefits of winning these cases.

2. In the UK more than 50% of patent infringement cases result in the patent being invalidated by the courts. That is, more often and not the courts over-rule the patent office that granted the patent in the first place.

So the quote should have read “A patent is an option granted for a device, substance, method or process that is new, inventive, useful when compared with what is already known, and not obvious to someone practised in the art. It gives patent owners an expensive right to sue a third party for supposed infringement of their patent, noting that such actions more often than not result in financial losses to the patent owner.”