Micro entity status is a concept designed to help less powerful parties stand a fair chance against bigger companies when acquiring patents. Skeptics might suspect that this rule somehow causes bigger companies to exploit the system; for example, a big company could create many small companies with micro entity status. However, this not the case. 82% of those filing micro entity status are ordinary individuals and groups. 1% are businesses and 17% are universities. So far, the regulations on micro entity status seem to be working well.
PATENTLYO
http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/02/entity-status-filing.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbDpkEPLH-E
I think a reason the big companies are not creating many micro entities could be due to the segmenting of their patents, making it more difficult to put them all together to create a strong case. Fortunately, with the upcoming patent reforms, there is even less incentives for big companies to exploit the system.
ReplyDeleteI agree that big companies have less of an opportunity to exploit the system, considering the upcoming patent reforms. That's probably due to the focus that's been placed on big names such as Apple, Samsung, etc. Because they're at the center of the patent war, regulations seem to adjust to their behavior.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting post. I honestly didn't know that there was a system in place to proactively protect smaller companies and their intellectual properties. I wonder what the friction is mostly attributed to that large companies are not faking micro entity status to achieve the special treatment
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