One way to fill a slow news day seems to be to publish a patent-themed blog or article. There are several flavours of these sorts of article. Example headlines might look like:
- Patent reveals that TechCo’s next product will have this feature or appearance!
- Can you believe that MegaCorp has patented this?!
These sorts of articles can be frustrating. Nuances of the IP system and how the system is used by applicants are ignored in favour of a “story”.
It may be that the algorithms are primed to show me (a patent attorney) more of this stuff than is normal. But these articles certainly exist. The aim of the following is to help decipher them.
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Predicting the future
It is a completely valid approach to use patent filings to identify macro-trends for individual companies or in the wider economy. After all, patents are used to protect technical innovations.
So, an uptick in patent filings in a given sector can be evidence of where a company or industry is focussing time and investment. I followed exactly this approach in an earlier article in relation to the mining sector. Similar stories could undoubtedly be written about a boom in AI-related filings by companies such as Microsoft or Google.
However, an attempt to use the disclosure of individual patent applications to predict something about a specific product or service should be taken with a pinch of salt.
This is particularly true for large companies, such as smartphone or vehicle manufacturers, which tend to be the subject of blog authors.
Large innovative companies will tend to generate significant quantities of intellectual property (IP) as they iterate through prototypes of a product or due to more general blue-skies research.
Much of this IP will not make it into a final product perhaps because an idea did not pass validation, was not commercially interesting, or was simply never intended to go into one of their own products in the first place.
Patents may be sought for this IP regardless. This might be because the decision to file a patent application usually needs to be made at an early stage in development, before the true value or feasibility of an invention has been validated.
Additionally, there is often value in building a wide patent portfolio. This makes it harder for others to compete and opens up licensing opportunities.
This means that a feature should not be presumed to be the next big thing just because it appears in a patent application or two. As a specific example, Spotify holds a US patent relating to automated parking, which is clearly far removed from Spotify’s core market of audio streaming.
Smaller companies with only a handful of patents will have a stronger correlation between the subject of their patent filings and planned products.
Patent drawings
Attempts are sometimes made to predict the appearance of future products based on patent drawings. These predictions should be taken with an even larger pinch of salt than those based on the text of a patent application.
Drawings in patent applications are generally the result of rough sketches from the inventors, helped along by a patent attorney and formalised by a draftsperson. The drawings usually bear little resemblance to the implementation of an invention in a final product and will generally have been prepared years before the appearance of the final product has been settled upon.
Outrageous patent filings
The aim of one strain of patent-related blogs appears to try and instil outrage in the reader by making it seem like a large company has unfairly been granted a patent for commonplace technology. However, when you dig deeper, it usually becomes clear that the situation is far more reasonable. Often, a granted patent is being confused with a patent application.
Patent application or granted patent?
A patent application is merely a request to obtain exclusive rights for an invention. Only a granted patent gives the applicant a monopoly right.
The journey from patent application to patent usually takes many years and a patent is only granted when the patent office is satisfied that the invention defined in the patent application is novel and inventive – and certainly not outrageously commonplace. During this process, a patent application will usually need to be amended to reduce the scope of protection sought to avoid prior disclosures found by the patent office.
Therefore, granted patents are usually narrower than patent applications. If an application is filed with an overly broad scope, it may need to be significantly amended and reduced in scope in order to get it to grant.
So, when an article is suggesting a company has “patented” an idea, it’s worth checking whether a patent has actually been granted yet. It is likely that the application will still be at the application stage and the application will be amended, perhaps significantly, before being granted.
One way to tell if a patent document is an application or a granted patent is to look at the publication number. Publication numbers ending in an “A” are usually patent applications, whereas publication numbers ending in a “B” are usually granted patents. Publication numbers starting with “WO” are applications rather than patents.
Final comments
If you would like help using public patent data intelligently to gain insights into a company or sector's activity or if you are concerned about a particular patent document, please reach out to Onsagers. We have the expertise to help. Regarding the latter point, there are many strategies we can follow to manage the risks of individual patent applications or patents.
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