Anderson

The UK tax authority has recently released statistics for take up of the patent box in 2013-14 (the first year of the relief); on the same day, it released the latest statistics on use of the UK’s R&D tax reliefs for the same tax year. The reports make for some interesting compare and contrast points: Total claims in 2013-14 - patent box: 700 - R&D tax reliefs: 22,415 Total value of claims in 2013-14 - patent box: £342.9m - R&D reliefs: £2.45bn SME claims in 2013-14 - patent box: 475 (68%) - R&D reliefs: 19,990 (95%) Value of SME claims in 2013-14 - patent box: £15.7m (5%) - R&D reliefs: £1.165bn (48%) The largest claimant sector (for both patent box and R&D) is, unsurprisingly, manufacturing (63% of patent box claims; 30% of R&D claims). The second largest for R&D is Professional, Scientific & Technical, with about 20% of claims - but this sector only made 6.3% of patent box claims. This might relate to the nature of the patent box, and particularly...

According to research published by J. Gregory Sidak of Criterion Economics, the process by which the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) amended its patent policy was significantly biased in favour of implementers and against standard-essential patent (SEP) owners. He finds that large SEP holders that are net patent licensors and were opposed or neutral to the proposed changes had their comments on policy drafts rejected at a substantially higher rate than companies that are predominantly implementers and net payers of licensing fees. The bias favoured patent policy revisions designed to devalue SEPs. IEEE is the standards development organisation (SDO) responsible for developing the 802.11 WiFi standard, among many others. Sidak provides a succinct description of the patent policy amendments and finds that these limit the ability of SEP owners to generate patent licensing royalties. “In 2015, the IEEE ratified amendments to its patent policy to mandate that a reas...

The Fair Standards Alliance  makes various demands in its “position paper.” Among these it states t hat a standard-essential patent license “should be available at any point in the value chain where the standard is implemented and that a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory royalty should in most cases “be based on the smallest device that implements those patents, and additionally it should take into account the overall royalty that could be reasonably charged for all patents that are essential to that standard.”  Some of the FSA’s demands echo changes adopted last year by the IEEE in its revised patent policy .  Such dramatic disruption to the basis of SEP licensing would most troublingly affect trade between commercial parties with highly unpredictable outcomes on the amounts actually paid. Whereas technology developers and others can still choose whether or not to participate in IEEE standards setting and can declare with a “negative Letter of Assurance” if the...

One of the more esoteric aspects of IP finance is the need to pay extra compensation for inventors in many countries. Whereas some countries consider that an inventor is adequately compensated by his salary when she or he makes an invention, others, like the UK, adopt a position that extra compensation is payable if the invention is somehow (see sections 40 and 41 of the 1977 UK Patent Act ). Germany’s body of law is probably the most comprehensive anywhere. Every inventor is entitled to some level of compensation depending on the use made of the invention. There’s a seperate  Act  of the Bundestag devoted to claiming rights to the invention, the requirement to keep the inventors involved in the prosecution of the application as well as on compensating the inventors. The  Ministry of Labour  has also issued a series of  Guidlines  on how to calculate the level of compensation. Many inventors dream of fortunes to be made. And earlier in h...