Even the Patent Reform Group (PRG), which is campaigning to make the patent system more accessible for SMEs, says that legal help is a must.
"I would say, don't ever write a patent without using a patent attorney," says PRG chairman John Mitchell. "It's become such a technically complex process that unless you have a patent attorney your patent will be completely useless."
The cost of hiring a patent lawyer is likely to start at around £1,500 for a simple application and will increase for more complex applications, according to the UKPO. "If you're filing an application for basic mechanical technology it will cost around £1,500 to £2,000. If you're talking about an invention related to biotechnology that will arrive in the [patent] office in five boxes, that will hike it up," says the UKPO's Smith-Higgins.
But according to the PRG the extent of this "hike-up" could well be out of reach for a lot of smaller companies. The group's secretary Jon Miles says the UKPO is massively out with its estimations and that filing a patent application is likely to cost between £12,000 and £15,000 when you include factors such as responding to any queries during the patent approval process.
The reality out in the business community seems to be more in-line with the tens of thousands quoted by the RPG. Radioscape is a UK company, based in London, with around 90 employees, that fits squarely in the SME bracket. Given that its business is built around the emerging field of digital radio it has been forced to seek protection from the patent system on numerous occasions. So far, the company has filed about 30 patents at what is claims is a "considerable cost". The company not only employs a full-time patent lawyer but also uses external patent specialists to handle filing and enforcement.
"For a company of our size patents are a significant investment and for smaller companies the cost may be prohibitive. The view taken at Radioscape is that the value we get from having a granted patent is a worthwhile investment," says Richard Conway, the general counsel of Radioscape. "If you add up cost, particularly if you expand the patent beyond UK, it's quite substantial. [You have] the cost of patent searches, translating the patent into different languages, using an external patent attorney."
Although the Radioscape example highlights the significant costs of getting involved in the patent system, the company has also been used as a poster-child by pro-patent organisations. The company was cited on a recent UKPO document as an example of why patents are important for SMEs.
But in an ironic twist, although Radioscape has invested a lot of resources in patents for its various technologies, the company actually owes its very existence to the fact that some of its larger brethren chose to give it royalty-free access to some of their patents.
"We were formed in 1996 to take advantage of a digital radio standard — a group of companies such as Philips put patents in a pool to encourage small companies," says Richard Conway, Radioscape's general counsel. "If the standards body didn't exist and companies like Philips hadn't made their patents available, technologies like digital radio wouldn't be as common today."
Talkback
Looks like some happy few are hoping that the politicians will be stupid enough to simply hand them on a silver platter a complete new international market that they have the monopoly over.
And on top of that rows of rich, mostly overseas, internationals that will stumble over eachother to get their hands on anything they can.
But, as they say, to make a few people richer you need to make lots more poorer.
And that is exactly what this patent thing is boiling down too. Some want to be the arms dealer in this legal arms race and some are looking to conquer new lands and profits. But what's left then for the rest of us?
Maybe the captains of industry see a glorious future in this new legal war they envision. But what about the soldiers, corperals and sergeants? Is it really the case that the politicians are telling the generals what they can and can't do or is it vice versa?
Ignoring the tricksy "per se", that the UKPO/EPO use to pretend (absurdly) that they were talking either about written source code or about whole applications or about some phantom "non-technical" kind of software, when they are forced into a corner, it is a simple fact that the unamended directive will *codify* the EPO's legally questionable practice of granting software and biz method patents.
Never mind what the opponents of the Council version of the directive say: just read any independent analysis, such as the EESC opinion or Rossi's paper. Still not convinced you can patent the same software and biz methods at the EPO that the USPTO notoriously allows? Go to amazon and get yourself a copy of Keith Beresford's book, which tells you exactly how to do it, or read this:
http://www.european-patent-office.org/epidos/conf/patlib2000/presentations/beresfordk.pdf
Or look in the EPO and UKPO databases, which already hold around 50,000 software and biz method patents. So how exactly did they get there if they're "not allowed"? And just how exactly will the directive stop the recent avalanche of more of them, if - as claimed - it makes no changes to what the EPO considers patentable? This disgraceful and underhand attempt by the EPO and UKPO to sow confusion about what is really going on and what they intend the directive to achieve, is one of the most depressing aspects of this issue. The door is already wide open - the directive is intended to rip it off its hinges.
"How not to do it. In this was to be found the basis of the wise system, by tooth and nail upheld by the Circumlocution Office, of warning every ingenious British software author to be ingenious at his peril: of harassing him, obstructing him, inviting robbers in the guise of "IP companies" to plunder him, and at the best of confiscating his property after a short term of enjoyment, and giving it to the few largest companies, as though invention were on a par with felony. The system had uniformly found great favour with the Barnacles, and that was only reasonable, too; for one who worthily invents or writes innovative software must be in earnest, and the Barnacles abhorred and dreaded nothing half so much.That again was very reasonable; since in a country suffering under the affliction of a great amount of earnestness, there might, in an exceeding short space of time, be not a single Barnacle left sticking to a post."
From "Little Dorritt (for the modern reader)", by P.L.Hayes.
Thanks for info. We're a small software company and used the services of a legal firm specialising in patents on the advice of a government-backed advisor.
The experience was very expensive and bruising.
For anyone thinking of applying for patent on software, here is our experience.
First, trusted third-party advice is that up to 60 per cent of any software created will be stolen and modified/reused within four years - even if it is patented or patent application is filed.
Second, the legal profession work by the second and charge highly for their "expertise".
Third, we entered the process with the legal firm in good faith. When we decided not to pursue the patent application (at a MINIMUM cost of £4000 plus VAT), we were hit by an invoice for around £800. This was for the legal firm's time in looking at our hard work (all the patent searches we had done globally), a two-hour meeting with two legal representatives to discuss this, and a promise of a full questionnaire after agreement to pay the minimum £4000 (with no ceiling and no advice on how high the costs would go).
Fourth, a trusted third-party with experience in this field advised that we would need at least a £2 million "war-chest" to protect our patent.
So, our conclusion is - please, think very carefully before you enter into any patent process.