2.IP Rights: the Tools of IP Strategy

A.Patents

Patents cover individual inventions: specific pieces of technology. There are as many different types of patents as there are industries and businesses, but traditionally they fall into one of four broad categories: (1) mechanical items, such as brakes on a car, a gear shifter for a bicycle, a compressor engine for a refrigerator, a kitchen item, a tool, etc.; (2) chemicals, including pharmaceutical compounds (new drugs), synthetic fibers (plastics), dyes, insecticides, etc.; (3) electrical items such as an electronic circuit, a semiconductor, a transformer for transmitting electricity, and so on; and (4) processes, such as a food recipe, a series of steps for refining gasoline from crude oil, or a computer algorithm (such as a way to compress a long string of data into a shorter version for transmission or storage). (Computer programs can also be claimed in combination with computer hardware.)

These are just general classifications. New categories of patents are added every month in patent offices around the world: for artificial intelligence applications, autonomous vehicles, newly developed materials, technology for service industries (ride sharing, meal delivery), and so on.

Patents are issued by over one hundred countries around the world. Each country’s patent is enforceable only within that country; there are no real internationally-effective patents. There are treaties to help people get patents in multiple countries; and in some regions such as the European Union a central patent office is authorized to issue patents in multiple countries, but each patent must be enforced only in individual countries, even in Europe.

A patent document has several well-defined sections. The patent usually begins by describing a problem. Then it summarizes the new solution to the problem that is covered by the patent. A more detailed description of the invention comes next, which often includes discussion of how the new invention works better than what was known in the field before. (All information available before the invention is called the “prior art”.)

The most important section of the patent is the claims: the technical legal language that defines, as precisely as possible, the main features of the invention. Most claims do not describe a very specific, particular physical thing, such as a one individual screwdriver that is exactly 10 cm long, weighs 0.153 kilograms, and has a handle that is 4 cm long, orange in color, and 4 cm in diameter. Patent claims define a group or class of items having a set of shared, specific features, for example: “A screwdriver whose length is between 8 and 12 cm; weight between 0.10 and 0.25 kilograms; a handle [of any length, and any color], where the handle is between 3 and 5 cm in diameter.” The bigger the group or class defined by the claims, the broader we say those claims are. So in our sample claim, if we changed the length to “between 7 and 13 cm” that would be broader than the version of the claim set out just above, where the length was between 8 and 12 cm. Broader claims are on average more valuable: they cover more specific items, more different versions of one general design or structure. Claim breadth, then, is often an indicator of economic value.