Australian inventors still inventing during pandemic
At the beginning of this year, not many knew that 2020 was going to be so dramatic. On 25 January 2020, the first Covid-19 case had been recorded in Australia, although, it wasn’t until around March 2020, that most of us realised how serious it was. It got me wondering how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the rate of provisional patent applications filings in Australia.
The provisional patent application is usually the first application filed in the patent process and is intended to establish a priority date (the date from which patentability is assessed). The provisional patent application gives the applicant 12 months within which to further develop their invention, and as such is unpublished and unenforceable. After 12 months, the provisional patent application must be associated with a complete patent application (such as a PCT patent application, a standard AU, US or other patent application, or an innovation patent application). Almost anyone can file a provisional patent application with the intention of going into the patent system, but they can later change their mind if they find they don’t want to proceed. If the applicant does change their mind, they can withdraw the provisional patent application, or they can allow it to lapse, and no one will ever know the fruits of their entrepreneurial thinking. The provisional patent application is best used when the invention needs more work to fully flesh out the claims, but it should still describe the invention fully including giving a method of putting the invention into practice.
On the first day of 2020, bright and early, Aegis 1 Holdings Pty Ltd filed a provisional patent application entitled CUDDLEFISH MOBILE WRIST AIRBAG AUTO INFLATION GPS FLOTAION DEVICE WITH MOBILE APP, FOR CHILD/ADULT PORTABLE DESCRETE MOBILE MANUAL INFLATION DEVICE TO PREVENT DROWING (Sic). The application is not published, so we cannot know exactly what the invention is, but I suppose the title gives us a clue. From that inspiring start, others got going, and from 1 January 2020 to the end of this financial year (30 June 2020) (Q1/Q2) there have been a total 2222 provisional patent applications filed with IP Australia. So how does this 2020 half-year compare to other “half-years” that were Covid-19 free?
The graph below shows the number of provisional patent applications filed over the past ten years in Australia in Q1/Q2 from 2010 to 2020. Remember, these numbers are for just half of each year, so we can compare the data to this year 2020.
Australian Provisional patent applications filed Q1/Q2 per year
While no one could argue that this year has been “business as usual”, no one seems to have told provisional patent applicants! The filing rate has dropped somewhat, but not significantly and certainly no more than in any other year. As can be seen from the Table below, the top applicant for provisional patent applications in 2020 is CSIRO with a total of 23 filed so far this year. The data for 2020 reveals 4 university applicants in the Top 10: UNSW, University of Sydney, Monash University and University of Melbourne. Both Anne Marie Ebokolo-Jecop and Adam Gardner are productive self-filers. Ms Ebokolo-Jecop has lodged 17 provisional patent applications for face masks – something we have all started to think about a little more recently. It remains to be seen how many in the of these will go on to completion.
Top Australian provisional patent applicants 2020
The patent attorneys that are most active are Griffith Hack (IPH) and Davies Collision Cave (Qantm) with 147 and 113 filings respectively. The smaller firms are also active with those filing more than 20 provisional patent applications in the first half of this year including, of course, we at Foundry IP.
We look forward to supporting our clients over the rest of 2020; stay in touch, and we will follow closely the filing activity at IP Australia and provide more insights. If you do have a new idea and you would like to discuss it with us, be it mask-related or otherwise, please contact us.