IPRIA Working Paper Series
|
Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia Working Paper No. 10/2009 Patent infringement in Australia: Results from a survey* by Kimberlee Weatherall and Elizabeth Webster Date: May 2009 Abstract: One of the great unknowns of patent policy is how much infringement actually goes on, and how much of that infringement leads to enforcement of an informal or formal kind. We conducted a representative survey of over 3700 Australian inventors in order to obtain population estimates for these activities. We estimate that copying occurred for 28 per cent of inventions which were the subject of a patent application between 1986 and 2005. In half of these cases, a letter alleging infringement was issued. This letter succeeded in stopping the (alleged) infringing behaviour about 40 per cent of the time. We estimate a court filing rate of about ½ a per cent (filings per stock of patents in-force in any year). This confirms what we knew anecdotally – that a great deal of copying and enforcement activity occurs outside the court system. A surprisingly large number of incidents of copying were not pursued even with a letter, due to concerns about costs: a result which raises questions about the efficacy of patents for some applicants. Policy implications of the results are discussed. Downloads: PDF [394K] |
Search Again