Reasons For Low-quality Patent Filings And Ways To Avoid Them

Who is responsible for a low-Quality Patent? 

1. Competitive Environment And Pressure 
   In this cut-throat competitive world, every other company is in the race to get maximum benefits out of their innovations and research. Companies want to take a patent on almost every technology, they want to make space for every new-coming technology for which companies even conduct whitespace analysis.  
   Organizations put pressure on the in-house IP experts and patent attorneys to file many patents on very low budgets. Achieving the goal of ‘n’ patents instead of a small number of high-quality patents and trying to compete with peers often leads to low-quality patents. 

    

   Quality <<< Quantity 
   It is the management who is responsible for such low-quality patents because at the end of the day IP experts have to adhere to the instructions of their management team. The value of many large patent portfolios lies not in the specific rights or the quality of the inventions they cover, but in their size and shadow. 
   Due to tight budgets, organizations also refrain from patentability searches by in-house IP experts and other consulting firms. This paves the way for low-quality patents to end up in the patent office, and with a little luck, even patents that are neither financially nor technically relevant are granted.  

    

2. Drafting Team 
   Due to reckless, inexperienced members of a Patent drafting team, many a time even a million-worth patent is drafted in such a way that it loses its potential as well as its essence to even make money out of a patent.  
   A claim is the soul of a patent.  
   People say, “First impression is the last impression” and the claim is the first thing that any IP Professional would check to get the crux of the patent.  
   How can even a valuable patent justify its technical invention and R&D team efforts if the claims are poorly or generally ill-formulated?

    

3.  Leniency By Patent Granting Offices 
   For a patent to be granted in the US, the conditions are:  
   (1) Patentable Subject Matter,  
   (2) Utility,  
   (3) Novelty,  
   (4) Non-obviousness, And  
   (5) Enablement. 
   Many patents are granted with only a small inventive step. The patent office follows certain standards that new patent applications to be granted as patents must follow, but many a time the standards are too lenient and that is how even a low-quality patent Is granted by the Patent offices.  
   Also, the granting of patents that do not even meet the patent office’s standards is the reason for such low-quality patents.

    

4. Assignee 
   Patents are obtained for different reasons than conventional theory often assumes. Thus, the conventional understanding is that assignees use patent rights to protect their investments in innovation and development by excluding others from the scope of goods or services based on their patented ideas.  
   But now the case is completely different. An assignee wants to get a monopoly in every technology domain to debar competitors from obtaining relevant patents. In that case, the patentee will care less about patent quality; what matters in that case is not the ability to withstand a validity challenge in litigation, but simply the fact of the presence of patent.