Philip Brooks' Patent Infringement Updates

Peter Zura Recaps 2005: Year of the Patent Troll

Check out Peter Zura's 271 Patent blog for his recap of 2005 as the Year of the Patent Troll and the associated lively dialogue from those on both sides of this issue.

For example:

While there is a conventional wisdom to view every patent being asserted by a holding company as a "bad" patent, this is not typically the case in reality.

I do not see "ordinary individuals" being empowered by patent holding companies. Most of these companies are backed by an amount of funding that is unattainable for ordinary individuals.

Chinese Patent Application Statistics

The IP Dragon blog reported on Thursday, December 29, 2005 the following statistics from the State Intellectual Property Office of the Peoples Republic of China (SIPO):

Applications 2004

• 110,000 patent applications
• 588,000 trademark applications

Applications 2005

• 130,000 invention patents applications (50 % from multinationals headquartered in developed countries; patent applications from American enterprises will exceed 20,000)

Patent applications of companies from developed countries

• 93 % in electronic transmission
• 91 % of mobile telecommunications
• 90% audio and visual technologies
• 85 % semiconductors
• 69 % pharmaceuticals
• 60 % computing technologies

Percentage of Inventions

• 86 % from foreign companies are for inventions
• 18 % of patent applications from China are for inventions
• 0.03 % of Chinese enterprises own key technologies with intellectual property

About 99 % of Chinese enterprises have never applied for patents and 60 % do not have their own trademarks.

China is ranked third in foreign trade, patented high technologies contribute only 2 percent of total foreign trade.