Worth Zero

As bizarre as it sounds, one of the most common delusions of inventors is ‘the worldwide patent’. In Australia, as most other countries, you can actually start the patent process yourself at a very modest cost; $80 here. Now the problem with this is every lunatic has $80 … so patent offices, if you are listening, do something about this. You are fuel on the delusion fire. Even worse in Australia we have a thing called an innovation patent … too much detail to go into here, but the bar is lower as are the costs. This means that you people (and when I say ‘you people’, I do mean ‘you people’) can get the impression that you actually have some intellectual property because you have one of these granted. Whether this, or a provisional or are in process somewhere my advice is – turn off Pink Floyd and PUT THE BONG DOWN!

One service that the patent attorneys could perform for humanity is to let everyone who comes in to speak to them about a patent understand that it’s a COUNTRY BY COUNTRY PROCESS. Yes, there is the PCT (Patent Co-operation Treaty) which is actually a worldwide PROVISIONAL, not a worldwide patent. That is, it establishes the date of the ‘invention’ but nothing more. It’s not a grant of rights. This happens when the patent is examined and granted by individual countries.

In general, even if you go through the PCT process, at some point you must choose which countries you want to go into ‘application phase’ in. These are the countries where you will be examined by the chosen countries patent offices. You may then be granted a patent in that country. Yes, you can save a bit of mucking around via the EU agreement, but an EU application is not every country including some critical Scandinavian countries so it pays to be aware of what the limitations are including what translation costs you may incur and individual country fees even if you are approved by an EU examiner.

The cost of patents is is another post, but let’s cross Get A Worldwide Patent off our bucket list … what do you think?