Is your business overlooking opportunities to gain a market advantage over competitors?
Like every other sector, businesses with interests in infrastructure file patents for innovations that target reducing costs, increasing efficiency and mitigating safety risks.
In 2019, 1,708 patents were filed in the civil engineering technology field in Australia. This puts the infrastructure sector in the top 5 technology fields for the number of patents filed. To put this into context, only the medical technology, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and organic chemistry fields filed more patents.
What do patents do for infrastructure businesses?
Patents help businesses in the infrastructure sector to:
- Prevent competitors from copying innovations
- Gain an advantage over competitors (e.g. to offer materials or services in a tender response that competitors cannot provide)
- Market products as patented or patent pending
- Add value to a business
- Generate an additional income source (e.g. through licencing patents)
- Expand into international markets
It is critical that your business identifies potentially patentable innovations at a very early stage in the development process and is structured to enable patenting decisions to be made quickly and efficiently.
What do the patents cover?
Patents in the infrastructure sector cover a gamut of technologies. The examples below are some of the most common:
- Equipment (e.g. cranes and excavators)
- Materials (e.g. plasterboard, bricks, concrete, glazing)
- Methods of producing construction materials
- Heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems
- Construction safety mechanisms
- Methods of construction (e.g. new methods for improving construction efficiencies)
- Electrical systems and electrical components for buildings
- Automation systems for buildings
- Scaffolding systems
- Prefabricated building systems
How to spot a potentially patentable invention
Generally speaking, if an invention is new (e.g. not a product already available on the market), no matter how simple it may seem, it may be possible to secure patent protection in Australia and overseas.
There are a few simple steps that can be taken to identify potentially patentable inventions:
(1) Upskilling employees on the patent process
- Patent knowledge enables employees to identify potentially patentable inventions so that they can then be flagged early in the development process. For example, it is important that a patent application is filed before publicly disclosing or commercialising an invention. While some jurisdictions (including Australia) have a one year grace period for a public disclosure of an invention, many of our major trading partners do not (e.g. China and Europe). Therefore, it is important that employees involved in the development of new products and processes know to keep these confidential until the business has made a decision with regard to filing a patent.
- Patent education also enables simple processes to be implemented during the research and development phase to reduce the costs associated with the patent filing process.
(2) Implementing an internal patent identification system
- This typically involves assigning an employee with a patent management role. For larger companies in the infrastructure sector, this person might be a research and development manager or an engineer. For smaller companies, it is not uncommon for a director to take on this role.
- Employees that identify potentially patentable innovations could then flag this to the designated patent manager to enable a commercial decision to be made in regards to filing (or not filing) a patent.
(3) Having a trusted patent attorney advisor that is able to provide practical and commercial advice to enable patenting decisions to be made quickly and efficiently
MinterEllison’s patent filing practice
As the only fully integrated patent practice in an Australian law firm, we draft and prosecute patent applications with a view to commercialisation and enforcement. Our multidisciplinary team includes patent attorneys registered in Australia and New Zealand. Patent attorneys Shyama Jayaswal and Nigel Lokan lead the practice. We have extensive experience in drafting patents and managing the prosecution of those patents in Australia and overseas. We can assist companies in the infrastructure sector to identify potentially patentable inventions and to implement cost effective patent filing strategies that suit commercial objectives.
A qualified engineer, Gus Lightowlers is the firm’s engineering subject matter lead, delivering professional experience as an engineer in the infrastructure sector. Before registering as a patent attorney, Gus worked as a project engineer managing the construction and commissioning of a pharmaceutical facility, a mechanical engineer designing air handling systems for new construction projects, and as an environmentally sustainable design engineer.
