By Teo Bong Kwang*
0n 26 September 2010, Jimi Heselden, a British businessman who recently bought the Segway company was happily riding the famed “Segway” scooter in his huge Yorkshire estate. In a tragic turn, the Segway scooter ran over the cliff and into a river and Heselden was immediately killed. At that time, Segway scooter was a much touted invention of US inventor Dean Kamen.
Surely not every invention has tragic consequence. On the contrary, many inventions brought much happiness, fame and fortune to their inventors or owners. Take the example of the “One Click” patent of Amazon which was granted by the US Patent Office in 1999. It has reportedly generated billions for Amazon.
The Hidden Value of Patent
Many of us are totally oblivious to the immense commercial value of an invention or for that matter, the importance of an intellectual capital in the form of a patent in any business enterprise. The vast majority of companies are simply unaware of the often-enormous economic and competitive values that lie untapped within their patent portfolios. To borrow the euphemism popularized by Kevin Rivette and David Kline, it is like you have Rembrandt paintings lying dustily in the attic.
Balancing Market Monopoly and Public Interest
The modern history of protecting one’s invention started in Venice in 1474. In the UK, the first piece of legislation which attempted to protect invention was The Statute of Monopolies, 1623. In its own archaic language, it allowed “patent monopolies” for 14 years upon “any manner of new manufacture”. Stripped of legal niceties, it merely meant that the State would grant a monopolistic right in the form of “letters patent” to the inventors. As a trade-off, the inventors must disclose their inventions in a clear manner so that it can be used by a ‘person ordinarily skilled in the art’. The philosophy of protecting patent is pretty simple: the State will grant a limited protection for any invention for a period of between 15 to 20 years in exchange of the full technical information related to it. Once the protection period has expired, the inventions are free to be exploited by anyone. It is believed that with the required statutory protection given by the Government, inventors would be encouraged to engage in more inventive activities and come out with more novel inventions. This will ultimately benefit the society at large as the innovative ideas as disclosed in the patents will add to the pool of existing technological knowledge in a particular field. In this manner, society will progress in innovation and it will enjoy the fruits of the inventive members within it.
Flash of Genius can be Present in Mundane Objects
The image Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein or a mad scientist with fuzzy hair will immediately come to mind when we talk about invention. This is of course a myth. The reality is that not every invention needs to be Einstein-que or earth-shattering like the atomic bomb. On the contrary, a cursory search at Google Patent will show that many mundane objects have been or are still protected by patents. For instance, a gadget to boil eggs, the yellow “post-it” note and the ubiquitous paper clip are subject matters of granted patents. Indeed flash of genius can be present in many mundane objects.
The Requirements for Patenting a New Invention
In 1983, Malaysia has its own national patent legislation. It is called the Patents Act, 1983. It came into force on 1 October 1986. Before the passage of this legislation, we could only obtain patent protection by first registering a patent in the United Kingdom and then re-register it in the three component regions of Malaysia. With the passage of the 1983 Act, we could obtain a national patent by filing an application with our local patent office.
The most frequently asked question which an intellectual property law practitioner like me has encountered is: how do I get a patent?
The answer is to first get your invention written down clearly in a document which is commonly called “patent specification”. However, before this is done, it is imperative that the invention must possess the following requirements:
- the invention must be “new” in the sense that it has not been disclosed to the public anywhere in the world. The disclosure can be in the form of written publication, actual usage, actual article or even oral presentation or even sample shown in an exhibition;
- the invention must involve “an inventive step”. The question whether an invention involves an “inventive step” can be asked in another manner: whether the so-called “inventive step” (i.e. the “inventive feature or element”) of the invention is obvious to a person who has ordinary skill or experience in the subject matter; and
- the invention must be “industrially applicable”. This last requirement is normally easily satisfied as long as the invention can be commercially or industrially exploited. The rationale of this requirement clear, that is it is to prevent granting of patent for some theoretical invention which cannot be put into practical use.
In order for a patent to be valid, all the above three requirements must be present. Anyone who has some experiences in patent litigation will inform you that most patent litigation are fought on the above three issues. If a patent is proved to have been lacking in any of the above requirements, it can be cancelled or invalidated. Thus as a prudent measure, before an eager inventor spend enormous money in getting its patent specification drafted, it is advisable to ask the patent drafter to conduct the necessary “searches” to ensure that there are no other prior publications or disclosure which will nullify the invention.
Once the patent specification is properly drafted, the other steps of getting a patent granted are relatively straight-forward. The first step is to fill up the prescribed forms and then file them with the patent office. You should of course consult a patent lawyer or agent for this important step.
The obtaining of a patent for any innovative breakthrough is an indispensable step to secure a cutting edge for achieving continuous growth of a business in this competitive environment.
_______________________________________________________________
* This article first appeared in “Focus” Magazine in 2018.