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disregarding the competition law authorities, you’d have people jumping up and down, saying “Why have you got worldwide protection for something when you have no intention of exploiting your invention in most countries?”

Applying for a patent needs to be a thorough process; if the monopoly you claim is too narrow, others will find a way round it. (For example, if you invent a product and specify in your patent claims that it must be made of metal, if someone then makes it out of plastic your patent will not cover it).

to simplify the system (other than in the UK itself).

If you do decide to apply for patent protection for an invention, not only is there the cost of the initial application but then, at a minimum,

someone else (or allow them to take a licence and let them pay the renewal fees). And do not discount the fact that it is generally accepted that if renewal fees were scrapped, it would inevitably lead to higher fees at the outset.

If the patent claims

are too broad (and then they may well be rejected at the time the patent application is being considered) the owner of the patent obtains an unjustified monopoly – although there is the risk that the patent will be held invalid if challenged by a third party, and almost invariably there will be such a challenge if the owner of the patent tries to enforce it against a third party.

James Dyson, the industrial engineer,

famous for

designing the bagless vacuum cleaner, has recently said that high costs and an effective bias towards infringers meant inventors and small companies felt unable to enforce their rights:

“The Government must act to simplify the system. Patents are expensive to file in the first place. Then you’ve got renewal fees – there’s no other walk of life where you lose your rights on your work of art if you fail to 'renew’ it. And then the costs of actually fighting a case are out of this world.”

Q What do you think about this?

Although there is some truth in what he says about the system being simplified, it is perhaps unrealistic to suggest the government would be able to act in any effective manner

the patent has to be translated into the language of the additional countries in which you apply, which can be very expensive. (There may well be significant other costs too, associated with the cost of processing the application in different countries). Renewal fees also have to be paid at regular intervals (and generally these subsidise the cost of the application procedure). Is it being suggested that, in simplifying the system, all patents should be in English (pity those small businesses abroad where people don’t speak English to a sufficiently high level) or that we in Britain should understand patents in Japanese or Spanish? Why should renewal fees not be paid, provided they are reasonable? A business is only likely to renew a patent if it thinks that the monopoly granted by it has some continuing or future commercial value. If it is not exploiting its monopoly, why not leave the field clear for

The Government must act to simplify the system. Patents are expensive to file in the first place. Then you’ve got renewal fees – there’s no other walk of life where you lose your rights on your work of art if you fail to 'renew’ it. And then the costs of actually fighting a case are out of this world.”

If someone then infringes your patent, you have to sue them. This is almost invariably in the country (or countries) in which the infringement is taking place.

James Dyson gives somewhat

extreme

examples of it costing £3m for a patent infringement action in the UK, and a lot more in the USA. In fact, in the UK, if you’re a UK producer/business, there’s the Patents County Court (the PCC). Following reforms a couple of years ago, it has transformed the position for small scale infringements – if you take a patent infringement claim to the PCC, although you can spend as much as you like on it (as can the defendant), neither party can recover more than £50,000 costs. In practice this means that

the costs are only a small fraction of the £3m James Dyson suggests (and indeed the costs in the High Court only reach the levels suggested by James Dyson in exceptional cases – which are usually of great commercial value).

As patent proceedings are complicated, they are always going to be relatively expensive if the issues are going to be dealt with properly; you need (as you get in what is a relatively limited number of countries, but which include for example the UK, the USA and Germany ) decent judges who are well experienced in patent law. However we’ve had cases where we have gone to another country, e.g., Spain, and the judges are dealing with dry cleaning disputes and the like one minute and patents the next. And there are other countries where the legal system is not well known for its fairness, let alone its ability to