China Leads In Graphene Patent Applications

hackingbear writes According to British patent consultancy CambridgeIP, China has filed for more than 2,200 graphene patents, the most of any country, followed by the U.S. with more than 1,700 patents, and South Korea with just under 1,200 patents. In terms of institutions, Samsung, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and IBM lead the way of number of patent filing on this futurist materials with seemingly unlimited potentials, followed by Qinghua University of China. As China's moving its economy to be more innovation based and strengthening its IP laws, American companies will perhaps soon be at the receiving ends of patent law suits.

Comments

Re:So now we can steal their IP?

[JosKarith]

The only ones to get rich will be the lawyers.
Who drafted all these laws in the first place...

Re:So now we can steal their IP?

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to distinguish between a discovery and an invention, and prevent patenting the former. You shouldn't be able to patent graphene, as it is a discovery. If you invent a clever way to manufacture it cheaply, than you should be able to patent that method as it is an invention. Also, if you bring a lawsuit against someone for patent infringement and you lose, you should be executed.

Complete lack of US involvement

[Required Snark]

Note that the US is not directly involved in any of the major patent holdings. IBM is not really a US company anymore. They are "international". To a great extent they are getting out of the US. A few year ago they stopped listing their employment by country, because they wanted to hide what they were doing. So if there is ever a situation where US interests collide with IBM economic interests then the US will get the short end of the stick.

This is what happens when you let everything get privatized, including basic research. You end up with no stake in the future.

Re:So now we can steal their IP?

[MacTO]

I highly doubt that the solution is to abolish patents, though a great deal of patent reform is certainly necessary.

What we should de doing is looking at when patents are and are not useful, and modifying patent law accordingly. A lot of the analysis should be fairly straight forward to do. Patents themselves have to be registered, so we have records. When patent disputes are taken to the courts, we have records. Many, if not most, of the businesses that license patents have to publish financial reports. (Again, there are records.)

Questions can be asked and answered through all of that data. We can look at the optimal duration for patents for different sectors. We can look at what types of patents stimulate innovation, and what types of patents stifle innovation. We can even look at licensing practices in an effort to reduce the burden that patents place upon the courts.

It isn't all or nothing. Patents are neither entirely good, nor entirely bad. We simply need a way to separate the good from the bad so that we can keep the former and discard the latter.