In 2020, three My colleague and I put together a three-page sketch of a patent idea, full of typos, and passed it on to our big tech recruiter. In return, we each received $700 in bonus money. Proposals can take half an hour to write and less than five minutes to present to an internal review panel of experts who are also our peers. We joked around, the board voted yes, and we emailed the file to the internal legal team. More than a year later, our application for carbon footprint monitor published, published.
It is typical for a company to assume ownership of intellectual property developed by its employees. However, in my experience, proposed patents don’t have to be groundbreaking or even business-related to gain traction. Carbon Footprint Monitor has nothing to do with my work or any proprietary technology. Some of my colleagues have up to 100 patents under their names, covering everything from video games arrive find a better parking spot arrive coffee delivery via drone.
This is not unusual at large tech companies. Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Cisco, Google, Intel, Meta, and Microsoft, among others, have employee patent recognition programs. Incents vary, but these tech giants offer entry-level employees cash bonuses and free access to a team of patent attorneys, “estimated value” services. $50,000,” according to Microsoft’s infomation page.
Inventor’s employee payments typically start at around $500 but can go into the thousands as the patent life progresses. Most companies offer a reward for any patent-worthy idea, regardless of whether it is ultimately granted or rejected. According to internal documents, Apple offers up to $4,000 to each inventor in each filing. Others keep large expenditures until patenting, a process that often takes years and ends successfully with only about half of all patents filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office. According to inside sources, Google pays employee inventors $10,000. (Google did not respond to a request for comment.)
I submitted over a dozen potential patents through my company’s process and received a framed certificate of my efforts, sent to Fatty Nut Watkins, which I submitted in my name. just to see if they print it. Patenting is fun, easy, and downright fun.
Before the technological revolution, it was difficult for corporations to manage an in-house system for rapid, often community-resourced patenting. A decade ago, the USPTO handled only about half as many patents as it does today. Applications must be filed by individual inventors, which prevents employers from employing an important step. This changed in 2011, when paragraph Leahy – Smith America Invents Act Streamlined the process and allowed companies like my (now former) employer to file a patent on behalf of an employee inventor.
Around the same time, tech giants became increasingly interested in patents. Like Steve Jobs was reported to say when we invented the first iPhone, “we’re going to patent it all.” And patent all that Apple has done — right up to slide to unlock features and beveled edges. In 2011, Google’s top lawyer, David Drummond, claimed that the average smartphone could be protected by 250,000 patent claims. Nowadays, it seems that no one can count correctly, but last month revenue of all the “legacy patents” from Blackberry’s discontinued smartphone business that grossed $600 million.
