Towards the end of last week, we learned of the sad and unfortunate fate of the five passengers aboard the OceanGate Titan submersible. This tragic episode has raised several questions, most of which are beyond the scope of this blog or this post. Yet, what is encompassed within the scope of this blog is that OceanGate had four granted U.S. patents. Is there anything we can learn about this tragic episode from those patents?
Read MoreElizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, has been convicted of securities fraud. There are many lessons and take-aways from Holmes’ story and the verdict. For one thing, fake-it-till-you-make-it may now yield concrete consequences for failure. Yet, one overlooked lesson is that the Theranos downfall illustrates a failure of patent-literacy—particularly among investors. (This is, after all, a patent blog.)
Read MoreTheranos’ patents may have assured investors that the company was a good bet, but that does not mean those patents were a failure of the patent system. Rather, the patents illustrate a deficiency of IP literacy. Investors—and recent commentators still—have taken the patents to mean something they are not. Indeed, the patents—and the file histories behind them—have been public for years. Those patents and file histories revealed many red flags that were apparently ignored.
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