Invention Patent

Anyone who invents something new can apply for an invention patent with a state authority. If they receive it, no one else may manufacture or sell this invention for a certain period of time. In most countries, this protection lasts at most 20 years from the date of application. In return, the state demands something in exchange: the invention must be described in a public document precisely enough that a person skilled in the field could reproduce it. A patent is therefore a trade. The inventor receives a time-limited monopoly, and the public receives knowledge that would otherwise have remained secret.

Why companies pour billions into patents

Developing an invention is often expensive, whereas copying it is cheap. A drug can easily cost over a billion euros to develop. The finished chemical formula can be reproduced by a competitor for a fraction of that cost. Without patent protection, expensive research would hardly be worthwhile. The patent is meant to close exactly this gap.

For companies, patents are therefore an asset like a piece of land. They can be sold, inherited, or leased out. Leasing is called licensing: another company pays money and is allowed to use the invention. The chip manufacturer ARM earns its money almost exclusively this way. It hardly builds any chips itself, but licenses its patented designs to Apple, Qualcomm, and others.

But patents can also slow things down. Some companies collect patents only to sue others, without producing anything themselves. In the industry, these are derogatorily called patent trolls. And in the software and AI world, it is disputed whether patents on computational methods actually promote innovation or rather hinder it.

New, inventive, industrially applicable

For an application to succeed, the invention must meet three conditions. First, it must be new: it must not have been published anywhere in the world beforehand. This also applies to the inventor themselves. Anyone who shows their idea on Instagram beforehand destroys its novelty. Second, it must be based on an inventive achievement, meaning it must not be obvious to a person skilled in the field. Third, it must be industrially applicable, meaning it must somehow be able to be manufactured or used.

The application goes to a patent office, in Germany to the German Patent and Trade Mark Office in Munich. Examiners there search through the so-called state of the art, meaning all already known publications. This process often takes two to five years. Afterward, the patent is either granted or rejected. A granted patent only ever applies in the countries for which it was applied.

It is important to distinguish patents from other protective rights. A patent protects a technical invention. A copyright protects a specific text, image, or program code and arises automatically without an application. A trademark only protects a name or logo. Pure ideas, mathematical formulas, and laws of nature are generally not patentable.

Patents in tech news

In business reports, patents mostly appear in the context of disputes. Apple and Samsung litigated for years over patents on smartphone features, with damages in the hundreds of millions. There were also conflicts over vaccines regarding who had patented which technology. Such proceedings often determine which products may even be sold in a country.

A second type of news is statistics. When it is reported that China now files more patents than the USA, this is taken as an indicator of technological strength. Such figures should be read with caution, since many applications are economically worthless. Quantity says little about quality.

In everyday life, you encounter patents more inconspicuously. If a drug suddenly becomes much cheaper after years, a patent has usually expired. Other manufacturers are then allowed to offer imitation products, so-called generics. The note “patent pending” on packaging also belongs here. It only means that an application is underway, not that it has been granted.