Companies often use intellectual property rights to prevent a competitor from stealing their technology. This can take the form of a dense web of overlapping patent rights—commonly referred to as a "patent thicket"—which a new company or business venture needs to navigate through in order to commercialize its products or services. The patent thicket for Internet-of Things (IoT) has grown immensely over the last 10 years. At every level of the IoT ecosystem, folks are patenting IoT inventions, from sensors to network protocols to security. In this article, Finnegan partner Kenie Ho addresses patent thickets as they relate to IoT companies.
Previously published in Corporate Counsel
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