Opportunities In The Patent-Free Zone

China may overtake Japan to become the world?s second-largest economy this year. On its heels is India, and countries such as Brazil and Russia are not far behind. What does this mean for entrepreneurs? That, increasingly, the big opportunities lie outside the U.S. Most people aren?t aware of another advantage in emerging markets: you can freely leverage the wealth of proven intellectual property that has already been created in developed economies. Most countries outside the U.S. and Europe lie in a Patent Free Zone?where companies have not filed patents because they believe there is no market for their goods. So this intellectual property is available to anyone in those nations that can find a use for it.

Take the iPhone as an example: it has over 1000 patents; yet Apple does not apply for patent protection in countries like Peru, Ghana, or Ecuador, or, for that matter, in most of the developing world. So entrepreneurs could use these patent filings to gain information to make an iPhone-like device that solves the unique problems of these countries. Apple has so far received 3287 U.S.-issued patents and has 1767 applications pending: a total of 5054. Yet it has filed for only about 300 patents in China and has been issued 19. In India, it filed only 38 patent applications and has received four patents. In Mexico it has filed for 109 and received 59 patents (for all of its patents). So even India, China, and Mexico are wide-open fields.DIRECTV GROUP ELPIDA MEMORY EMC FIDELITY NATIONAL INFORMATION SVCS.