Whose patent is it anyways

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted to the innovator to safeguard his interests for the next 20 years or so, when no one else can copy the product or has to pay royalties to do so. The entire framework behind this was to ensure the innovator gets monitory and first mover advantages for his research and development, to make sure people have incentives to do more research and new 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, used to backfire/compress or terminate competitors and as a medium to earn riches.

But, it has degraded to a level where a company can just discuss out new features and file a patent for the same. The result is many companies earning millions and millions not because they manufacture such quality products, just because they were the first to think of an idea. Today’s MNCs don’t shy away in extracting exorbitant amount in royalty fees, licensing fees, court claims and settlements. A single new product results in usage of dozens of old patents (with their licensing fees) and creation of two dozen more patents. A patent is not supposed to be for the way you scroll content on an iPhone or the number of image processors inside a single Kodak camera. Of course the patent can be for the piece of hardware, the circuit or the code written. But, if someone else is able to produce similar or better output with their own code, hardware or circuits, that does not make them liable to pay the other company.

The law firms, not understanding any nuances of technologies, blindly approves patents and creates a ground for patent wars.

Its not surprising 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 usage of signalling techniques, Apple fired back over the usage of scrollbars and Nokia again filed a new lawsuit against Apple’s iPad. The war similar to the situation when Kodak sued Apple and Apple countersued Kodak.

This war is for patents, but, it is not because 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 totally based on greed, the greed top earn more and eat each other’s profit share. Finally,   the two will do an out of court  agreement, something similar to, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

Maybe Indian companies can also learn from these MNCs and start building a pile of patents. That way the large telecoms can just sit back and earn royalties. Poor Bharti telecom, if Mr. Sunil Mittal had filed a patent for caller tunes or missed call alert service, Airtel would have crossed all 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. No matter how ridiculously stupid the above ideas sound like, the US patent history is full of such applications and most of them are accepted as well.

So, if we knew day one day we can not manufacture even board games without paying royalties, we could have patented a dice, which has been used and discussed in India since the times of Mahabharata.

What’s urgently required is formation of a good panel which does a thorough investigation before approving patent and constantly reviews any approved patent. If 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 3-5 years then it should be discarded. The same should be done in case where the company filing patent has recovered all research and development expenses associated with patent and all past unsuccessful trials and has already made handsome profits with the same. If the patent filing company keeps licensing their patents to other companies, the patent should expire much earlier than the 20 year span. Even if one of the above rules are materialized, the patent market will be much more regulated and there won’t be such high exploitation of the patent system.

Furthermore, when RiceTec applied a patent for Basmati rice, the first question would have been that why they want to use the word Basmati, the premium Indian and Pakistani rice breed, which is most popular and expensive. A further research would have revealed that their genetic breed has qualities of extra long length, width and fragrance which are all associated with the traditional Basmati breed harvested near Himalayas. After such findings, they would 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 made, the company should have been forced to stop selling any breed 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 them to add new injunctions in law or amend the law in their favor.

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