Patents Trivia

By

Nagi Hatoum

 

 

 

IEEE survey reveals that 33% of engineers are patent holders

 

 

How much does a full patent cost?

 

 

From IPWatchdog

 

Hopefully the following patents were relatively cheap:

 

 

ßDog Watch

 

The dog watch is actually a "clock for keeping time at a rate other than human time" and was invented in 1991. Why would you need to know dog time?  Beats the heck out of us but with this handy watch you can perceive time at your animals rate instead of your own.

 

How does it work?  According to the inventor the watch multiplies every human second, minute and hour by seven, thus giving us "doggy time".  If Fido lives to be the ripe old age of 14, that translates into 98 human years!  Or is that 98 dog years?

 

 

 

 

 

Fresh-Air Breathing Device à

 

In case you get trapped in a fire, you can breathe smoke free air from the sewage pipes.

Luckily all hotels are equipped with this life saving device.

 

 

 

 

How Many Patents Ever Make Money?

 

Less than 2% of all patents make money. 20% of patents are held by independent inventors.  The success rate of independent inventors if their odds are the same as a corporation is 0.4%. IBM did an internal study 10 years ago and found 40 valuable patents out of 10,000 studied. This is a 0.4% success rate. But that tiny percent yields about $1.6 billion a year in licensing revenue to IBM. So they beat the odds by churning 3000 patents a year, more than anybody else. The millions lost applying for patents are reaped back by the billions gained.

 

However, don’t be discouraged, the odds of winning at a lottery are 1 in 15 million. If you buy $25,000 worth of lottery ticket at $10 each, your odds of winning are 0.0001%.  You have 4000 times more chance of making money from a patent that costs $25,000 than buying $25,000 worth of lottery tickets. A patent you can hang on a wall, a lottery stub you throw in the waste basket. SO KEEP ON INVENTING!