Patent thicket

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A patent thicket is "a dense web of overlapping intellectual property rights that a company must hack its way through in order to actually commercialize new technology." [1]

The expression may come from SCM Corp. v. Xerox Corp. patent litigation case in the 1970s, wherein SCM's central charge had been that Xerox constructed a "patent thicket" to prevent competition. [2]

Patent thickets are used to defend against competitors designing around a single patent.[3] It has been suggested by some that this is particularly true in fields such as software or pharmaceuticals, but Sir Robin Jacob has pointed out that "every patentee of a major invention is likely to come up with improvements and alleged improvements to his invention" and that "it is in the nature of the patent system itself that [patent thickets] should happen and it has always happened".[4]

Patent thickets are also sometimes called "patent floods", [5] or "patent clusters". [6]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Carl Shapiro, Navigating the Patent Thicket: Cross Licenses, Patent Pools, and Standard-Setting, 2001, Innovation Policy and the Economy (Vol. I) (Jaffe, Adam B. et al., eds), pp. 119–150, MIT Press.
  2. ^ Donald Paneth, News Dictionary, 1978, Published 1979, Facts On File, Inc., pa. 9, ISBN 0871961075
  3. ^ Rubinfeld, Maness, “The Strategic Use of Patents: Implications for Antitrust”, Draft September 18, 2004.
  4. ^ "Patents and Pharmaceuticals", a paper given on 29 November 2008 at the Presentation of the Directorate-General of Competition’s Preliminary Report of the Pharma-sector inquiry, by the Rt. Hon. Sir Robin Jacob
  5. ^ "...multiplicity of patents, referred to as “patent thickets” and “patent floods” ..." in Mattias Ganslandt, Intellectual Property Rights and Competition Policy, IFN Working Paper No. 726, 2008, page 12.
  6. ^ "One commonly applied strategy is filing numerous patents for the same medicine (forming so called "patent clusters" or "patent thickets")" in European Commission, Pharmaceutical Sector Inquiry, Preliminary Report (DG Competition Staff Working Paper), 28 November 2008, page 9 (pdf, 1.95 MB).

[edit] See also

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