Citations citations

Just look at this list that someone has published.

About 8 of these have expired. The inventions in the other 2 haven’t led to product at all (in one instance) or hardly (in the other).

Here is a detailed breakdown of each invention:

10. The bionic eye is not on the market.
9. Safe-T-Cam – 24 sites in Australia does not make a commercial success!
8. Rocksoft – Exit value was A$83m – towards the bottom end of venture exit values (for Silicon Valley). I have no idea what the IRR was for the investors.
7. RAFT – it’s in my field of expertise. This was the first continuous radical polymerisation (CRP) and it was licensed to DuPont. However it also turned out to be one of the most expensive CRP methods and is not a major process.
6. Resmed – tick (market cap $8b)
5. Chochlear – tick (market cap $4.5b)
4. Alice – the original anti-value patent! It’s the one that the US Supreme court used to re-set the threshold for inventiveness for abstract ideas. This one is virtually worth negative infinity and has royally screwed the market for patent assets.
3. Silverbrook – Memjet has had very limited market success especially since that ‘print’ is just about dead. There has been a massive negative IRR to all investors in Silverbrook and Memjet
2. ICE – it looks valuable on paper and the NPEs were probably very interested. Post Alice, it’s valueless
1. Aristocrat – this patent didn’t stop any of their competitors linking together slot machines – just saying…

What does this mean?

Well, firstly citations amongst patents (the basis of the compilation of this list) are a poor indicator of the commercial merit of an invention. Think of this as a bunch of pigeons lovingly cooing at each other whilst in the distance an F/A-18 strike fighter scoots off with loot.

Secondly, if this is the so-called top ten patents (by any measure, no matter how dubious) then it’s pretty obvious that Australians are rubbish at invention. What a lacklustre list. If you need to be convinced please note that Australia has about 8% of the US population. Historically in the US there has been enforceable patents for things such as the cotton gin, the electric motor, the ice machine, telegraph, the phonograph, the light bulb, the computer (electric adding machine), the aeroplane, and even sliced bread. In the drug space, a single Pfizer patent for Lipitor earned that company an estimated $105 billion. I could go on forever but do believe me, the ultimate top ten US list would be worth thousands of time more than 12x (accounting for the population difference) the value of this Australian list of most valuable patents.

Since the authors have included expired patents I wonder why they didn’t include those Aussie classics such as the Hills Hoist, the Victor lawnmower, the combine harvester, Vegemite, the Pavlova (OK, OK, it’s a Kiwi invention), yada…. Some of these inventions must have been the subject of the patent hallucinations of their mad inventors.

What about the spirit level and the water diviner I say?

The article that accompanied the patent list was in the Fin Review. The angle was that old chestnut; Australians are great at invention but crap at commercialisation. [Cue chorus from the white shoe brigade] “Dear Federal Government please give us some money to fix the problem.”

What we should have patented is a method to delude ourselves with respect to our collective inventiveness. This invention has been reduced to practice and is eminently patentable. Commercially, it’s very successful too – a eternal fountain of tax payers funds flowing to the unworthy.