Patent filing small markets

National patent offices act within the boundaries of the country they exist within and apply that country s patent law. Patent applicants may file applications directly with national patent offices in each country where patent protection is required. The decision of where to hie an application is generally based on the predicted potential markets for the invention. For example, a crop plant genetically modihed to be resistant to frost may only be marketable in countries with colder climates and with markets open to genetically modihed foods. Another consideration is the patentable subject matter allowed in each jurisdiction. For this product, an inventor can seek patent protection for a plant in the United States, but not Canada or Europe. The most cost-effective strategy for an invention that is only marketable in a small number of countries is to hie patent applications directly with individual national patent offices. 

In January 1957, DuPont filed for a patent, based on the finding that the incorporation of higher a-olefins in PE (US Patent 4076698 Arthur William Anderson, Gelu Stoeff Stamatoff—Filed 4 January 1957 published 28 February 1978 DuPont, for what we now call LLDPE) improved the product, but for DuPont, it appears that this ethylene copolymer was not really a very attractive venture compared to their other, high-margin proprietary products, like nylon. Although Du Pont of Canada introduced such a process in 1960, worldwide the products remained a small volume specialty until 1978, when Union Carbide announced their Unipol process, and actually coined the name linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE). As we see later, since 1980, LLDPE has continued to increase its importance in the evolution of the portfolio of polyethylene products, likely to approach 1/3 of the total PE market by the end of this decade. 

My personal feeling is that the cost of patenting is relatively small compared to the cost of further research cind development and market research. Generally speaking, people tend to file for patents and prosecute them fairly quickly, with very little assurance that they are going to have any commercial products. 

In the early composition of matter, process and product patents that IKC had filed, reference and claims to all types of substituted styrene homopolymers and copolymers in the syndiotactic configuration had been made. These became the practical basis for the development of film and fiber grade products with improved (in this case reduced) crystallization rates from the melt. The incorporation of small amounts of alkyl-substituted styrene monomers led to a new line of products for these markets and applications. The almost complete random copolymer of para-methyl styrene and styrene with these catalysts is the basis of this technology. Once it was discovered that this was effective, it was only a matter of optimizing the melt crystallization rate with... 

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