‘Nearly everyone is an inventor’
Intellectual property rights cover a range of instruments such as patents, copyrights and trademarks among others. Several industries that particularly employ technology employ IPR instruments to retain an edge in the market. Gabriele Mohsler, Vice President, patent development at IPR & licensing, Ericsson, shares the key trends and opportunities in the sector. Edited excerpts:
Can you give an overview of what are the key trends in the sector currently?
Intellectual Property Right is a rather broad field that includes patents, trademarks, designs and alsocopyrights.IPRingeneralhas a very long tradition in the European countries. Their patent offices were founded hundreds of years back but it was mostly linked with and perceived in relation to very mechanical things. Here in India, the IPR sector has developed quite tremendously. If you look at patent offices, they were set up at quite a fast speed in India compared to other countries. The number of patents also hasgoneuptremendouslyallover the world. But I am happy to report that the number of patented inventions in India has also gone up, particularly patents by women inventors.
Since your area of expertise is patents, could you give more details about the nature of patents? From the Indian perspective, what are some key demographic trends?
Patenting in general is distributed into every field of technology. Technology is a base for every patent. Having said that, a large number of patents come from the fields of life science and chemistry. A big portion of technology-related patents come from the field of electronic engineering field. If you look into demographics, I would say nearly everybody is inventing something or the other. For example, if you see a problem at home, and you try to solve it, you are being an inventor. And a number of people bring their home inven- tions to the patent office and file them as a patent or utility model. But of course, the vast majority of inventionscomefromcompanies.
Larger companies and small/ medium companies typically have a strategy to file a number of patents, primarily because, companies are better suited and more successful when they secure their patents.
How important is it to patent an invention?
It is extremely important. In very simple terms, if you have a patentable idea, you have to be the first one and it has to be inventive. Then you should very simply secure it for yourself, not that you block others but that you have it and nobody can block you. With that you create the foundation of bringing up your business for example or continuing your business. That is why patenting is extremely important. There have been studies and I have seen this in Germany recently - startups that have a patent filed are able to raise more funds. If you have a patent filed, you are able to raise morefunds.Thingshavetobenew to be patentable. If they have been there before and published, it is not patentable.
When you mean published, you mean academically published?
Anywhere, it can even be by talking,eventhatisapublishedway.If wetalkandwehavenonon-disclosure agreement, that’s published. If I show at a fair my invention and I have not filed it before then it is not patentable anymore, because it has been shown to the public.
What kind of mechanisms are in place to identify that something is original?
When you file a patent, there is a search done by the patent office where they check the whole internet, patent literature, as well as the large databases around. Their goal is to only allow a patent to be granted which is new and inventive and new means not published before. With that you get a search report from the patent office and then are given an indication that whether the things are new or not. This is done when you file for a patent worldwide. While, if they find that the same idea is either patented by someone else or alreadyinprocess,thenitwon’tbe patentable for you as you were the second one.
How are women located in this sector?
There have been lately published statistics from the PCT - The Patent Cooperation Treaty, that currently about 30% of the inventors are female or at least inventions filed have at least one woman in it. If you check the number of filings from 2002-2016, the number has gone up from 20,000 to 60,000 where women are involved. So there has been a tremendous growth in the past 15 years, versus the years before because patent system has existed for last 150 years across various countries. So, there is quite an increase but if you look at society’s composition, there are about 50% women, so why is the number of women inventors lower? I think it starts very early at the pre-school and school level. You have to give the girls the same chances as boys at every level. Prejudices such as not letting girls play with toys that have conventionally been used by boys are a problem.
For a person interested in IPR, what kind of opportunities and scope exist?
The basic stage and where the majority of people work is the patenting area. This is followed by the prosecution to get it granted. Then the second step would be potentially licensing. And at the last leg, it is litigation. But the litigation typically very often is done by legal attorneys while patent attorneys are technical people who have a technology or a science background. So, there is a difference between the profession of IPR people and patent people. While the patent people are from a science background IPR professionalsaremoreintolegalsystem. The success of IPR hinges upon a strong legal system.