More inventors seeking patents
by Angelia Davis
Originally published in The Greenville News, June 26, 2011
Nine-hour work days have ended for patent attorney Doug Kim, thanks to a surge of applications he's receiving from local inventors. Kim, a shareholder at McNair Law Firm PA in Greenville, said he's now working nights and weekends on patent applications that will likely exceed his 2008 total of 68. In 2009, Kim had 38 patent applications. That total rose to 46 last year and was at 30 earlier this month, with nearly 30 more waiting for him to prepare and file. The spike, he said, was “a very quick one.”
“Speculating, it was a lot of pent-up work and then when some kind of consumer or business confidence took over, they (inventors) said, ‘OK. Let's go,'” he said. “I think these projects were all sitting on the shelf ready to go when everybody was comfortable.”
Patent applications on the county, state and national level were not readily available through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, but the agency's statistics did show a rise in patents approved. Patents granted in South Carolina were 395, 461 and 517 in 2008, 2009 and 2010, respectively. Nationally, patent approvals were up to 107,792 in 2010, from 82,382 in 2009 and 77,502 in 2008. The trend that Kim is seeing is not necessarily being viewed the same by other local attorneys. Some said there hasn't been a noticeable rise in applications. Others said they have seen business pick up, but can't say if it's due to a warming economy.
“The anecdotal evidence is that during tough economic times, people have more time on their hands and tend to focus that energy into developing some of their ideas that maybe they didn't have time to develop before,” said Timothy Monahan of Monahan & Moses, LLC.
“Secondly, when there are tough economic times, people are looking for some kind of strategic advantage like the exclusivity a patent can give you,” he said. The anecdotal evidence is that the patent business did real well in the Great Depression for those two reasons, Monahan said, “but I couldn't say that that's going on right now.”
Dority & Manning PA , a full-service intellectual property firm in Greenville, is as busy as it has ever been because of new patent filings.
But Neil Batavia, shareholder at the firm, said it's hard to correlate the economic climate with whether people file more or less applications. Sometimes it really depends on a company's perspective.
“Some companies are trying to maintain the market share that they have and a way of doing that is new filings,” he said. Other companies are looking for areas to cut costs and they're doing that in intellectual properties, he said.
Christopher Allen, owner of Beyond Question Learning Technologies Inc., which makes student response system interactive classroom technology, said he doesn't believe the economy has much of an impact on coming up with the ideas.
“There's that constant flow of creativity and innovation but at the same time it may be a little bit harder to find the resources to take those ideas to fruition,” he said.
“You have to look to the future and say this economy isn't going to be bad forever. If I am applying for the patent now, by the time I have all of that preliminary work taken care of I can expect the economy to have improved and for there to be a market for the products that I will build off of those patents,” said Allen, who has patent applications with Kim.
The bulk of the patent applications that Kim is seeing are from small- to medium-sized companies that are seeing a demand for their products and are growing. “They are out there spending money and they're trying to protect their rights,” he said.
In addition to Beyond Question Technologies, his clients include Zike, creator of the new hybrid scooters and bikes, and Teludyne Technologies, a Greer-based company which has developed a system it says improves the shooting accuracy of high-powered rifles and weapons. Zike went from two employees to 22 in 12 months. Teludyne has filed two new patents over the past couple of months on two wholly new products, Kim said.
Hoowaki, a start-up in Pendleton, also has two or three new patent applications, said Sarah Hulseman, the company's product development engineer.
“Patents are good protection and a great way to discuss your discoveries or your inventions with customers and competitors,” said Hulseman. “It shows you value these things.”
Kim expects to continue to see patent applications rise, fostered by the “entrepreneurship mentality” that exists in the Upstate and more investors willing to invest in start-ups.
South Carolina has been doing a lot to foster innovation among companies and people see that as an opportunity to grow more homegrown businesses in the state, Batavia said. The Upstate in particular has a variety of organizations that are trying to help small businesses, particularly high-tech, high impact start-ups off the ground, he said. “Certainly those size companies are filing more patent applications,” he said.