One of the most prominent inventors in the UK, John Mitchell, picked up his slingshot in defence of his US patent on a speech recognition interface for computers – and won. Multinational Goliaths, including Dragon Systems, IBM and Dictaphone have entered into contracts on the right to use Mitchell’s ‘Allvoice’ patent. Now he is the armour-bearer for other inventors.
In this kind of case, American litigators work on contingency and, at a guess, John Mitchell’s lawyer may have earned almost half the damages, according to Affärsvärlden, a Swedish business magazine. It is easy for large corporations to break innovative SMEs. The wheels of litigation grind slowly, but legal costs can pile up fast. This is why John Mitchell has used his award in damages and licence revenues to found SME Innovation Alliance – an organisation with several heavyweight British names on the board. Mitchell and SMEIA are now driving a campaign to persuade British politicians to create a publicly supported body that would, on the strength of a substantial capital base, be able to ‘adopt’ a patent and defend it against attacks.
A system of this kind is also being discussed in Sweden. A group of Swedish engineering stakeholders is working to persuade the government and parliament to allocate resources to defend Swedish patents against infringement. A proposal has been submitted to the government to form “Statens Patentpartner Sweden AB” with a fund of SEK 50 million. The idea is that inventors will be able to transfer their patents to the state-owned patent company, which will charge a percentage of licence revenues in exchange for protection. Vinnova financed the development of the plan and the idea is supported by organisations including The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA), The Collegium of Inventors and Innovationsbron.
Mitchell and the Swedish activists were all inspired by Irish professor William Kingston at Trinity College, himself a successful inventor. A little more than ten years ago, Kingston wrote a report for the European Commission about how SME innovators could assert their patent rights against large multinationals.
John Mitchell’s major successes in patent battles have won him hero status among inventors, writes Affärsvärlden. Personally, he is more modest and credits his success to having been lucky enough to find talented lawyers who took up his cause.
His most difficult trial, a patent dispute against Microsoft, is still ahead. Microsoft has gained a change of venue from the appellate court in Texas to its hometown of Seattle, which makes things more difficult for John Mitchell. In an interview with Ny Teknik magazine, Mitchell said ‘I am now being forced to hire new litigators, who will have to familiarise themselves with the case and Microsoft will have the home team advantage.’
