As inventors abound in the Upstate, the region becomes a hotbed for intellectual property
Judging by the thousands of patent applications originating from Upstate cities, there are more bright ideas floating around us than we’ll ever know. As such, the details of patent law can be an important if sometimes invisible part of the local economy.
The region’s intellectual property (IP) comes from lone inventors, small teams, universities and large companies such as Milliken, whose claim to 2,200 U.S. patents and more than 5,000 worldwide patents is part of its standard marketing message. That does not include companies such as GE, whose locally produced IP is credited to headquarters cities in other states.
And there’s more to come. For instance, ZF Transmissions last year announced an expansion that is expected to bring 400 more employees to its Gray Court facility by 2016. Patent lawyer Stephen Bondura of Dority and Manning IP law firm said ZF is the kind of company whose huge patent portfolio will have a marked effect on the amount of IP generated here.
“As more and more technical companies move into this area, the Upstate is becoming a hotbed for engineering and development, and they’re going to continue to do so,” Bondura said.
Law Changes
They and all would-be inventors have been affected by parts of the 2011 America Invests Act (AIA) that took effect this past March. That is when the U.S. began granting patents to the first person to file the application instead of the first person to come up with the idea. The change puts the U.S. system more in line with the rest of the world, but not without controversy.
Jerry Barber, who holds patents for 54 inventions he has been creating since the 1970s, is one of the many who feel the rule potentially favors large corporations.
“I don’t like that. It used to be I could come up with a good idea, and talk about it before I began the patent process,” he said.
However, Bondura said the change adds some clarity to the process. It also preserved some advantages for individuals and smaller organizations, such as a one-year grace period before an inventor has to go public, something unique among the world’s countries.
Even so, Bondura says other changes added a different type of uncertainty about how they will affect the process. For instance, patents can now be challenged after they have been granted.
“So people are waiting to see how many companies are going to take advantage of that,” Bondura said. “Is it going to help? Is going to work?”
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A Complex Tool
Even without AIA changes, the business of inventions is so complex that patent lawyers can’t just be lawyers: they must have an engineering degree or background in order to even qualify to take the test to practice patent law. The level of complexity and detail required to draft the legal document demands that patent lawyers understand the invention as well as its designers.
Cost and complexity are factors in why fewer than 5 percent of patented products are ever produced commercially. What’s more, Bondura said, companies often use patents as a defensive tool, known as a “picket fence.” In that case, they might develop and patent a product that competes with one they intend to sell, but never actually produce it.
Continued Inventing
Even if companies might use patents to hinder competition, Bondura said the spirit of the law is to foster innovation – and it works very well. The technical detail of patent applications is to ensure that others can understand the idea and build upon it. In exchange for opening their secrets to the world, inventors get a period of 14 or 20 years, depending on the type of product, to enjoy exclusive commercial benefits.
There’s no sign that the pace of invention will slow any time soon. Dority and Manning opened up nearly 1,700 U.S. patent applications in 2013.
“The Internet has dramatically changed the ability for an inventor to gather information and learn what’s out there,” said Barber. He said he could never have created the wind turbine design he is currently working with without being able to find information from aviation and other industries on the Web. Prototyping with 3-D printing technology has also made a remarkable difference.
Despite legal challenges and changes, Barber said the climate for individual inventors only keeps getting better.
