The term patent inflation may be new to many and even online dictionaries have not yet caught up to the patent inflation term. Still, it is used to describe the phenomenon of thousands of patents being filed every year putting tremendous pressure on the Intellectual Property Offices around the world.
Since it becomes all the more difficult to invent something original, most of the new inventions registered are just enhancements of previous inventions. The growth in software patenting is the main contributor to patent inflation around the world.
A company such as Siemens for instance, holds more than 50 000 invention rights. There is a call to increase the tariffs and standards for registering new intellectual property rights to curb the growth in rights allocation which are not fully utilized by the owners, but the smaller inventors are the victims and the ones that will not benefit from this step.
In the European Office alone, more than 30 000 rights have been granted for software, making it a rather complex field to operate in. One of the problems faced by smaller companies or individual inventors is that large corporations don’t feel the cost of patenting as much as a smaller company or an individual.
The large corporation simply files lawsuits for hundreds of infringements and so get the smaller company caught up in court cases until the small inventor just cannot afford it any longer. Unfair as it may seem, it is reality.
To counter patent inflation and possible lawsuits, especially if you are involved in software developments, contact us at Smit & Van Wyk Intellectual Property Lawyers in South Africa to guide you through the minefield of software patenting.
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