To the engineers out there..

Does your company pay an incentive for filing patents? If so, how much, and on what terms?

Rob

A company I used to be a manager for, paid something like US$1000 for each successful patent granted -- the company retained all rights and authorship for the patent. I left that same company when they began to *require* that people like me file for software patents.

Cheers

Nope, no cash, nothing except your name on the bit of paper, but them who have successfully obtained patents, ones that then generate license fees, tend to be be favored for a while.

I used to work for a company that did this, it was $500 in 1991. I think its a really bad idea, actually. There was a ton of effort spent by engineers trying to get patents on useless stuff so the engineers could have another plaque on the wall and $500. I swear some of them made it their primary career focus. That is not valuable to the company and is a colossal waste of engineering time.

In my opinion, the decison to patent is a strategic business decision and not an engineering decision. Engineers should not be incented to obtain patents. Marketing, legal and strategic management issues determine whether something should be patented. Patents are an extremely poor measure of an engineer's contribution.

The patentability of an artifact is not a measure of its usefulness or the value of the engineer who designed it. Awards and plaques for patents server to stroke the egos of (in many cases poor) engineers rather than to reward excellent work.

On the other hand, recognizing an engineer for reducing warranty claims, decreasing manufacturing costs, gaining a major customer commitment, or expanding markets is something that should be done but is almost never considered.

FWIW,

Jim

Yes. Though the process and rewards varies. It looks like $100 is rewarded if the patent is reviewed internally, then an additional award of $200-$1500 depending on the type (utility/design/defensive) and if it is awarded by the patent office. It looks like the system is set up to prevent the mad rush to submit patents, since some review does have to occur before an award is given.

You know how some companies do employee reviews on a scale of 1 to 5? With a 3 being "meets expectations", and a 4 being "sometimes exceeds expectations"?

I once heard that, in order to get a 5 at Microsoft, you had to get granted a patent. Dunno if it's true.

I've not gotten bubkis (save my usual salary) extra for my five (six?) patents. I don't even keep track.

Having a patent's a nice ego boost, but the value of any patent is a function of a)what it covers (how broad it is) b)how strong it is (likelyhood of standing if challenged) and, most importantly c)how much money you have to prosecute or defend it.

I agree that patent filing should be a business, not engineering decision. Paying for filings seems like IBM's old practice of paying coders per line of code.

-Zeke

Here in Sigmatel we did get this explained to us the other day, so I ought to remember better really, but IIRC it's between $1000 and $3000 depending on how useful the patent looks to the company, and it's paid on granting, not filing. The Sonicblue (or was it DNNA? one of those lot) scheme of $5000 on filing and $5000 more on granting always seemed a bit over the top.

If you're setting up an incentive scheme at Numark, consider making it optional. When Sonicblue (or DNNA) tried (and thankfully failed) to patent parametric shuffle, they paid $5000 into my account without asking first, and I didn't feel clean again until I'd donated that exact amount to anti-patent groups to compensate.

Peter

At my university, we get nothing for filing, but we get 1/3 of the take if/when the patent generates licensing. It's unclear whether or not that 1/3 starts paying out before or after all the fees spent acquiring and licensing the patent are paid off. Aside from the big upside, a key difference between universities and companies is that university patents exist for the sole purpose of being licensed. Corporate patents can also exist as a threat to your competitors. Also, it's not crazy for a company to want to acquire the biggest stack of patents it can. Despite a lack of any "novelty" as the normal world might see it, a patent filing by the company can offer nice benefits if a competitor tries to enforce a patent against the company over a similar product. The company can say "the patent office issued us a patent on the thing you're claiming to own, so that means either your patent or our patent is invalid. Let's fight."

Thanks for all the comments folks. I wanted to check if we were out of touch with the industry by not paying engineers to file a patent, but it looks like the extremely generous (umm, mercenary?) scheme at DNNA was something of an exception.

To anyone worried I'm headed down an evil path, I'd just say that its hard to think of anything more appropriate to the spirit of patents than the kind of inventions we come up with at Numark. These are novel, tangible things which our (usually much larger) competitors would rip off in an instant.

Peter, your dirty money experience is something I'll not forget - so rare to see someone stick to his principles in that way. Most cool. There will always be a "Peter Clause" in any incentive scheme I'm responsible for.

Rob

I just found out this morning that our company used to hand out silver dollars to people who got their name on a patent. Not something with much inherent value, but something unusual with some physical merit. Kinda like a medal. You could conceivably have your own coins struck somewhere. But the UK have commemorative crowns, don't they?

We get an official-looking "Certificate of Recognition" citing your clever idea, when you submit an invention disclosure (which is our internal form to start the patent ball rolling), which gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling when you first get one, as though someone cares

Unfortunately, experiments show that if you type in a random string of words to our internal web form, you get the self-same certificate sent to you, complete with random words, which takes that warm, fuzzy edge off that and all the preceding feelings!

We also get a plaque when a patent is granted, which is nice, but not a great substitue for the money which is supposed to accompany it, but typically takes several years to appear (not all of it due to the patent office timing)

Nick