NEED ATTENTION on INACTIVE Status – Flexible Electronics

Published by DexPatent on February 6, 2020February 6, 2020

Starting from an idea to Patenting, it involves number of stages. In order to keep a patent / patent application active, the applicants need to comply with requirements of the patent office, for example, responding to office action, payment of fee, request for examination, etc. These requirements play a major role in the life cycle of the patent. Around 30-40% of the people who file patents are unaware of these requirements which may have legal implications including loss of rights.

While there has been a tremendous increase in patent filing count across various technologies, there is also a considerable percentage of patents / patent applications which fail to meet the requirements specified by the patent office. Such patents / patent applications are considered as INACTIVE Patents Publications.

Our research team at DexPatent, has done an in-depth study on Inactive Patent Publications in the field of Flexible Electronics to highlight the opportunities that Inactive Patent Publications present to the IP Fraternity.

Flexible Electronics, also known as “flex circuits”, is a technology for assembling electronic circuits by mounting electronic devices on flexible plastic substrates. Commonly, the substrates are made of polyimide, PEEK or transparent conductive polyester film. The ruggedness, portability and light-weight of flexible electronics, when compared to rigid substrates, is revolutionizing the electronics industry. Flexible Electronics is here to stay as it promises a new design factor for novel devices and it also costs less.

From an IP point of view, a majority of the patents in Flexible Electronic have been filed in the manufacturing of flexible substrate & flexible films. There are also patents filed in the areas of flexible batteries, memory and sensors. Incidentally, while the number of patents filed in Flexible Electronics is showing a healthy trend, there are also a huge number of inactive patents. We have recently researched on Inactive patent publications in Flexible electronics as it presents a great opportunity to innovators to delve further.