John: Emily, you said more than 10 million patents were granted in 2023. Don’t you think some of these might not be good ideas to be preserved at all? Are all these patents equally valuable?
Emily: You talked about patent value and weakness – you are thinking like an IP analyst already. In our profession, we relate this aspect with patent ‘validity’. While many patents are granted, not all of them hold up when tested in court.
John: What do you mean? Some patents may not be valid even after they are granted?
Emily: Yes, that’s correct. About 78% of patents, when challenged in court, are found to be
either invalid or partially invalid. This means that only 22% of the patents challenged in court are held fully valid.
John: Wow, that’s quite a significant percentage of patents facing challenges. Why does this happen?
Emily: Several factors contribute to patent challenges. One of the primary reasons is the requirement for a patent to be non-obvious and novel. If a patent is found to lack novelty or be an obvious extension of existing knowledge, it may be deemed invalid.
John: Oh.
Emily: Yes, the patent system is designed to encourage genuine innovation and to reward inventors who come up with groundbreaking ideas. Patent offices play a crucial role in examining patent applications to assess their novelty, non-obviousness, and adherence to procedural requirements. However, it’s important to note that patent offices may not always have the resources to thoroughly examine each application in-depth.
John: And is that the reason why so many patents are challenged later?
Emily: You’re right, John. While the statistics might raise some concerns, the primary role of a patent office goes beyond determining the validity of patents. One of the key things a patent office does is ensuring that the procedural requirements of patent filing are met.
John: What procedural requirements?
Emily: Let’s take the United States Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO as an example. They receive around 1600 patent applications daily. Despite this high volume, all patent applications must adhere to a standardized structure. This means that all patents look the same and have the same defined parts. There’s no branding, fonts, format, or style of a particular company; they use a similar type of language.
John: And how does this help?
Emily: Having this uniform structure allows anyone to look, find, and interpret the information they need efficiently. Its like classifying those patents how you group books in the library. Even though the task of interpreting patent documents may not be straightforward, tools can be designed to help carefully structure the search for specific information.
John: Okay..
Emily: Yes. The patent office’s primary focus is to determine if the application meets the necessary criteria for granting a patent, and it’s up to the courts to assess the validity of patents during legal challenges. This makes it easy for anyone to look, find and interpret (maybe this part is not that easy) the information they need. Tools can be designed and developed that can help
you carefully structure what you are looking for and find it quickly without being lost forever in millions of documents.
I don’t think we can say a similar thing for other ways of knowledge collection
Contd…
Discover the secrets within the pages, purchase now on Amazon.
