Catchword: submarine patent
Part of Speech:
n. The part of speech reflects that used in the
full entry, and not necessarily the part of speech as it is used in the quotation below.
Quotation: Occasionally, patents take a decade or two to be granted because they are held up in appeals and amendments in the Patent Office. When this happens under the existing system, an inventor can obtain a 17-year monopoly on an invention made long ago and demand payments from companies that have long been using the technology on the assumption that it was not protected by patents. Because these patents remain hidden for a long time and suddenly surface, they have been called “submarine patents.”
Article or Document Title:
“U.S. Agress to Alter Patents’ Period of Coverage”
Author:
Andrew Pollack
Article, Document, Publication, Web Site:
New York Times
Dateline:
Tokyo
Date of Publication:
Jan. 24, 1994
Page Number:
D2