The Importance of Transparency in Patent Applications
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Patents have been essential to worldwide structures of innovation for more than half a century. The reason for rapid increases in the number of applications for patents in the world is development, technologies, and globalization. However, corresponding regulatory policies remain silent on some important aspects of patents such as transparency and efficiency while the volume of filings is on the rise. As a result, social evils strongly associated with the patent system including poor quality patents, patent trolling, and complex patent thickets are witnessed alongside the application volumes. Academic work concerning patent information publication has been limited, with most major work done in the reform of the US patent application publication system around fiscal years 1995-2000. This is a significant research gap given that some of the deficiencies that have been identified as causing weak innovation systems persist, while innovation systems themselves continue to develop. Current level of transparency does not satisfy the needs caused by the increasing rate of advancement of technologies and the number of applications. Historical secrecy rules which are no longer applicable must be seriously examined.
The use of the Patent Cooperation Treaty to file patents has risen remarkably; the global filings done under PCT have doubled in under a decade. The exponential increase of patent filings is exerting increasing pressure on patent systems globally. Patent offices moreover face immense backlogs that threaten the quality of patents, as well as systemic problems laid down fourfold. Some of them are prodding applicants to submit poor quality patents, boosting the risk of infringement and litigation and possibly extending undeserving patents. The current administration hampers identification of patentability because applicants rely on comparatively early patent applications and search information and data. With such a structure, it also becomes easier for patent trolls, abuse and construction of towering patent thickets.
Although policy makers continuously support filings by offering lower fee charges, accepting electronic filings and other related measures, the core idea still lies in motivating innovative efforts and not just the amount of applications. This challenge is especially eminent due to the growing technological advancement, with current products having relatively shorter engineering product life cycle. Finally, increasing transparency comes out as a crucial approach to growing the effectiveness of the international patent system.
TRANSPARENCY ISSUE AND CHALLENGES IN PATENT SYSTEM
Traditionally, patent systems functioned under concepts of strict application confidentiality. Historically, until the end of the twentieth century, many countries, especially the developed would only release the patent applications after they had granted the patent and would keep it highly confidential during the process. These comprised computation of patent terms from grant, assertion of international rights of national inventors, and providing applicants with time to establish production capacity. The first to invent rule and limited international patent rules continued this secretive approach since few international patents included the US at the time.
And over time, apologists for secrecy have been forced to retreat. Current international patent laws, common terms of patents’ protection, as well as the transition to the first to file regime has countered the rationale for preserving the confidentiality of applications. Technological advance and networked innovation systems now put the patent secrecy model under pressure in a way that was unheard of before. There are strong argument for procedural transparency. Earlier publication benefits the patent authorities in the examination process, gives the competitors better opportunities to define the infringements and contributes more efficient use of public means. They can now be viewed as postponing the innovative steps and slowing down the technological advancements in civil aviation. Finally, the decline in secrecy of patent applications is discussed in the context of changes in global innovation systems. Transparency has become necessary in the dealing with the dynamic and technical environment of this century.
Typically, there is systemic lack of clarity where applicants even deliberately camouflage the patent descriptions and the claims. Patents are awarded for ideas which are not unique enough and which are not well enough described, and which do not meet serious innovation criteria. The prosecution process of a patent entails a crucial examination and a search process through which a determination of an invention’s patentability is made. Nevertheless, more and more national systems admit applicants to receive patents without corresponding extensive search and examination, which weakens the quality control. When search and review are conducted, they yield useful outcomes such as the international search report and written opinion of the International Search Authority as contained in WOISA. These documents afford independent evaluations as to whether or not an invention is new, non-obvious, and useful in industry.
However, present database on patents suffers from some drawbacks. Documents resulting from search and review are usually made available with immense delays, these documents are usually converted to scanned files which are not easily searchable and do not come with comprehensive metadata. The information found in patents is not as accessible as more traditional forms of scientific data for instance, one cannot simply search for data according to the applicant country or perform like modern data analysis. The issues relating to the transparency are not only the technical issues that occurred by the formatting of the documents. They in essence jeopardize the patent system to provide efficient management and distribution of innovative knowledge. Even altering minor setting in the rules of publications and the plans of the database could enhance much the accessibility of the patent information and effectiveness of the system.
ADDRESSING THE TRANSPARENCY HURDLE
Improving Patent Clarity thus remains a delicate matter, at the junction of the inventor’s, public and general interest, and technological advancement. One of them implies the increase of the quality of disclosures, especially in areas that are still in development, such as AI. Temporary measures have also been adopted where customers are urged to offer additional information on their inventions and the training data and/or methods for AI models. This information is essential for making others to advance and expand on patented inventions in order to meet the purposes of the patent system.
One recommendation is the implementation of data deposit obligations or other data repositories for the public. Similarly, this approach corresponds to requirements stated in other fields including disclosure of plant seeds in arable farming. AI inventors could be required to place training datasets or models into specialized repositories to ensure access to this information while at the same time preserving other relevant interests. Blueprints for such repositories could aid in addressing existing obstacles in transparency; while applicants might refuse to share any data, citing that they constitute their commercial secrets or while uploading substantial datasets, they may not be willing to spend hours labelling them.
Another approach considers methods on protecting privacy of the individual concerned in case of sharing of information. Patent applicants can maintain ownership of training data by incorporating the information within their systems; meanwhile, third parties who seek to refer to the material can be permitted with limited viewing rights. This might mean having secure systems where the data being used is not exposed but can be analysed by for instance, privacy preserving machine learning (PPML). These mechanisms ensure transparency enough while at the same time protecting invention or other important information.
The concerns put forward above can be addressed only with the help of the amendments in legislation and interstate cooperation at the same time realizing the mentioned proposals. For instance, how the need for transparency is underwritten in patent systems, say through putting down guiding principles as to how disclosure standards are to be met would close the gap. Although in its turn, applied in connection with the measures aimed at increasing transparency, these added costs and efforts can be considered useful for inventors, researchers and society in general due to the creation of a solid and favourable environment for innovations.
CONCLUSION
Most of the issues of secrecy, which were characteristic of earlier forms of modern international patent systems, have now been overcome. It is especially important to note that the remaining 18-month publication delay, beneficial for the indexing of some journals, has a negative impact on innovation.
The current system of secrecy regarding pending patents is a central cause of currents issues such as patent uncertainties, poor quality patents, patent trolls, and innovation barriers. He reckons that given the speed of technological advancement it is important that information be disclosed regularly in the ongoing innovation process. The United States’ experience in pushing forward the patent application publication has revealed that it has very small negative effects. A potential publication threshold might be 12 months priority term or PCT application conversion by which time most applicants have come up with their patenting strategy.
Patent system transparency can be enhanced through many reforms which is not easily achievable. These are; Shortening publication cycles, improving disclosure, and updating patent repositories to the ability to support modern and sophisticated searches. Patent searches would be made less complex, research capability enhanced, system confidence augmented, and there could be less wastage of resource in support of patents and research.
Author : Sulipta Surabhi, in case of any query, contact us at Global Patent Filing or write back us via email at support@globalpatentfiling.com.
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