In earlier articles I have looked at data on Australian patent filings and grants, as well as associated attorney firm performance.  While these numbers give us a good picture of application activity in Australia, they provide no information on the filing activities of Australian applicants in other jurisdictions.  Many innovators that are ultimately interested in securing patent protection in multiple countries choose to do so by first filing an international application (IA) under…

In my recent articles looking at patent applicants, patent recipients, and attorney firm performance over calendar year 2019, I noted (from all three perspectives) the disappointing showing of Australian applicants.  That being said, there are, nonetheless, thousands of applications filed by Australian residents every year, which got me wondering – out of idle curiosity as much as any expectation that it would be especially enlightening – where do ‘new’ Australian patent applicants come…

In my previous blog post, I explained how preparing articles looking at patent applicants, patent recipients, and attorney firm performance over calendar year 2019 had got me thinking about where ‘new’ Australian patent applicants come from, in the literal sense of where they are located geographically?  I also noted that IP Australia’s annual IP Government Open Data (IPGOD) release includes geographical information, in to the form of latitude and longitude coordinates,…

In my previous article, I looked at the top applicants for Australian patents in 2019.  In this article, I turn the spotlight on the Australian patent attorney firms that were responsible for handling many of those filings.  Having identified a 1% decline overall in standard patent filings, a nearly 20% decline in innovation patent filings, and essentially no change in provisional applications, it stands to reason that the Australian patent attorney profession as a…

Last calendar year, the number of standard patent filings in Australia fell by 1%, from 29,957 in 2018 to 29,666 in 2019.  While this represents only a small decline, it follows two years of growth, by 1.8% for 2016-2017 and 3.6% for 2017-2018, and thus represents a reversal of the recent upwards trend.  While international data on 2019 patent filings is not yet available, I think it doubtful that when IP Australia releases the 2020…

I recently wrote about the decision of the Federal Court of Australia in Repipe Pty Ltd v Commissioner of Patents[2019] FCA 1956, in which two innovation patents owned by RePipe were found to be invalid, and thus liable to be revoked, on the ground that neither was for a patent-eligible ‘manner of manufacture’ under Australian law.  In that article, I noted that even when software innovators, like RePipe, make substantial investments and incur…