Patents and Patent Strategies?What They Are and Why You Need Them

• Author: Donald S. Rimai
• Profession: Recently retired from Eastman Kodak, where he worked as a researcher and intellectual property manager in digital printing and adhesion science
• Pages: 17-32

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 e World Changed

In years gone by, clever inventors , o en working on their own, would devise

a new method or piece of equipment that would have distinct advantages

over that that had been previously available. Simple devices such as the

pol on an ax (the weighted portion of the ax head opposite the blade that

counterbalances the blade) provided more mass and better balance to the

ax than that of earlier designed axes.  is allowed the large trees found in

the New World to be cut e ciently.  e claw on a hammer that allowed

a carpenter to pull, as well as drive, nails is an example of another such

improvement.

Such inventions , though simple in concept, were extremely useful.

Moreover, they represented distinct technological advances that tended to

be fairly unique and di erentiated from any proposed alternative methods

that could be used to compete with these inventions . As such, it was o en

2

Patents and Patent Strategies—

What  ey Are and Why You

Need  em

18 Patent Engineering

possible to obtain a single patent that was readily understandable and that

provided adequate protection for an invention .

 is is no longer the situation in the 21st century. James Burke in his

books Connections [1] and  e Day the Universe Changed [2] described

how technological advances generally do not occur because of an isolated

inspiration. Rather, an individual, cognizant of seemingly unrelated tech-

nologies, with a stroke of brilliance is able to relate those technologies to

one another and solve a problem in a novel and bene cial way. As the num-

ber of such technologies, as well as the rate in which they occur, increases,

the need to protect one’s intellectual property changes.

Single patents no longer provide adequate protection . Rather, it is nec-

essary to generate a patent portfolio that totally envelops your intellectual

property. Such generation does not occur by accident. Rather, it is the

result of carefully developing a patent strategy .

As an immense side bene t of generating such a portfolio , you also cre-

ate a product that has great value in and of itself in the marketplace.

It is the purpose of this book to teach you how to formulate and execute

such a strategy , as well as to argue why it is necessary. Finally, we will dis-

cuss how obtaining such a portfolio can be done without burdening you

with undue expenses . To understand why the change from obtaining iso-

lated patents to generating a patent portfolio is necessary, let us consider

how the world has changed in the past 40 years.

40 Years Ago

 e world in 1972 was a far di erent place than it is today.  e United

States was only just completing its nearly thirty-year recovery from the

devastation wrought by World War II . People bought cars made in Detroit

by a tiny handful of American companies . European cars were relatively

scarce, Japanese cars even rarer, and Korean automobiles were entirely

unknown.  e cars were large, had an engine life expectancy of about

50,000 miles, and were o en sold to the consumers with numerous defects

that had to be  xed under the terms of the warranty a er the sale. Gas

consumption was not a topic most people cared about even though many

cars only got eight to ten miles per gallon. Why worry? Gas was inexpen-

sive and readily available and, as far as most consumers and manufacturers

were concerned, there was no need to change.

Computers , in 1972, were large, expensive power hogs whose impres-

sive mass belied their limited functionality. To even make the computer

work, the consumer had to buy a myriad of add-ons, including punch card