A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted to the innovator to safeguard his interests for the upcoming two decades or so, when no one can copy the product or has to pay royalties to do so. The entire framework behind this was to guarantee the innovator gets monitory and first mover benefits for his research and development, to ensure people have incentives to do more research and technologies keep coming in markets for the welfare of humanity. Little did the creator of patents law knew that it will be used to hinder the growth, create monopolies, utilized to backfire/compress or terminate competitors and as a medium to earn riches.
But, it provides degraded to a level in which a company can just discuss out new features and file Inventhelp Caveman for the same. The effect is a lot of companies earning millions and millions not because they manufacture such quality products, because these were the first to consider an idea. Today’s MNCs don’t shy away in extracting exorbitant amount in royalty fees, licensing fees, court claims and settlements. A single cool product results in usage of dozens of old patents (with their licensing fees) and development of two dozen more patents. A patent is not really meant to be for how you scroll content on an iPhone or the number of image processors inside a single Kodak camera. Obviously the patent can be for the bit of hardware, the circuit or the code written. But, if somebody else will be able to produce similar or better output using their own code, hardware or circuits, that fails to get them to liable to pay the other company.
The law firms, not understanding any nuances of technologies, blindly approves patents and helps to create a ground for patent wars.
Its unsurprising to sees the world’s largest and oldest manufacturer Nokia, fighting with new niche premium mobile manufacturer Apple over the patent wars. Nokia sued Apple over utilization of signalling techniques, Apple fired back over the usage of scrollbars and Nokia again filed a brand new lawsuit against Apple’s iPad. The war like the situation when Kodak sued Apple and Apple countersued Kodak.
This war is for patents, but, it is really not since these companies are hindering innovation or were not able to recover their research and development charges because of the other’s patent infringement. This war is completely according to greed, the greed top earn more and eat each other’s profit share. Finally, both is going to do an away from court agreement, something comparable to, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.
Maybe American companies can also learn from these MNCs and start creating a pile of patents. That way the larger telecoms can just sit back and earn royalties. Poor Bharti Airtel, if Mr. Sunil Mittal had filed Inventhelp Intromark for caller tunes or missed call alert service, Airtel could have crossed each of their barriers in terms of growth and had been world’s largest telecom company. On the similar lines, if Infosys had patented its global delivery model, it could have easily axed the competing firms and had ruled the offshore IT business. Regardless how ridiculously stupid the above ideas seem like, the usa patent history is full of such applications and most of them are accepted too.
So, when we knew day 1 day we could not manufacture even board games without having to pay royalties, we might have patented a dice, which has been used and discussed in India since the times during Mahabharata.
What’s urgently required is formation of a good panel which does a complete investigation before approving patent and constantly reviews any approved patent. In the event the company filing the patent, don’t use it within next 3-5 years, the patent becomes null and void, if patent seems irrelevant after 3-five-years then it ought to be discarded. The same should be carried out in the event where company filing patent has recovered all research and development expenses related to patent and all sorts of past unsuccessful trials and contains already made handsome profits with the exact same. If the patent filing company keeps licensing their patents to many other companies, the patent should expire much sooner than the 20 year span. Even though one of many above rules are materialized, the patent market will likely be far more regulated and tznwus won’t be such high exploitation of the Invent Help Invention Idea.
So, when RiceTec applied a patent for Basmati rice, the first question might have been that why they want to utilize the word Basmati, the premium American and Pakistani rice breed, that is most favored and dear. An additional research might have stated that their genetic breed has qualities of extra long length, width and fragrance which are all linked to the traditional Basmati breed harvested near Himalayas. After such findings, they might have been interrogated on the use of brands ‘Texmati’ and ‘Kasmati’ (name sounding similar to Basmati) labeled to deceive buyers. Once the entire case was created, the organization should have been required to stop selling any type of rice altogether.
But, none of the above action points will ever be taken in a land where any corrupt company can lobby the government ruling the land and force those to add new injunctions in law or amend what the law states inside their favor.