Patent applications are down in Australia thanks to tougher rules

"The number of patent applications filed over a period is often used as a measure of an nation’s success in innovation. But the latest figures released by IP Australia show there’s been a decline in the number of applications filed. Australia has a two-tier patent system. A standard patent provides exclusive rights in the invention for 20 years and an innovation patent that only grants eight years of protection. The main difference is in the level of inventiveness that each application is assessed against by IP Australia. Logically, a standard patent is assessed at a higher level in terms of advances over existing technologies." Read more

Tyrone Berger, The Conversation, 20 May 2015