Why a patent isn’t eternal

On the other hand, a trademark can be from 1842, but if its owner pays the fee every 10 years and nobody manages to revoke their registration due to disuse or some other legal reason, the trademark holder will never lose it. Compared to that, patents expire over time. The issue is that after a while a given solution will become part of the state of the art and its author should not hold onto it forever.

The strategy of patent offices is therefore to raise the registration fees the longer the patent protection lasts. Unlike with trademarks, these fees are annual, while for the first year in the Czech Republic it is three thousand CZK, for the 15th year it is up to fourteen thousand CZK. Even then, patent protection is time-limited, up to 20 years from the application being submitted. Some countries will extend this period by the length of the patent proceedings. For medicines (their active ingredients), the protection can be extended with a so-called supplementary protection certificate.

The patent-holder can of course licence its use to other subjects and it’s up to them how much they charge for this service. Apart from standard licences, some countries also have so-called compulsory licences. This system is based on the idea that anyone can take the given solution and use it for a legally defined sum. An author offering their patent up for this type of licence generally has lower fees for patent protection and renewal. In this way, countries want to support smaller inventors and allow them ways to patent their inventions under easier conditions.