What You Need to Know about Patents

Author:  Ken C. Decker
Source:  The Shot Peener magazine, Vol 19 / Issue 4, Fall 2005
Doc ID:  2005076
Year of Publication:  2005
Abstract:  
Patents, once a legal backwater, have become increasingly important to business. The number of new patent applications filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office sets new records every year (over 350,000 last year, compared with just over 100,000 twenty years ago), and awards in patent lawsuits are sometimes enormous. Dr. Gary Michelson, a practicing orthopedic surgeon who also invented several extremely valuable devices used in spinal surgery, recently won $550 million from Medtronic, a large manufacturer of medical devices. Yet patents remain somewhat of a mystery to many business people.