Sports and Fitness patent - How to protect your innovation

Football is one of the world’s favorite sports, has over 240 million players in 1.4 million teams in 300,000 clubs across the world. The sport has continually evolved and continues to do so. There are many innovations have been evolved in soccer sports in which from top companies to individual inventor have major contribution to it. In order to understand the technology and methods, design involved in it Patent and trademark could be useful tool.

A review of the patents granted over the last 20 years reveals that there was an up-tick in the number of patents granted for sports-related technologies during the 1990s, with a spike of nearly 500 patents granted in 1998 alone, followed by a drop to an average of around 250 patents per year from 2000 to 2012. The patents granted for innovations related to football are enormous. Accordingly, the number of patents mentioning “soccer” in the patent specifications as recorded on reached a figure of ~ 2,773 in between 2012-2014.

Also, the number of patent specifications (including design patents) mentioning “soccer” in the title as recorded on Espacenet leap from 91 in 1990-99 to 251 in 2012-2014. There are various changes in the design of the football it had change from 12-panel layout to 6-panel design that’s custom fit and provide stable aerodynamics. So many things have changed in the game and the innovative part has been patented either in design or utility and also trademark have important role in this. If we take a look over the patents filed by Germany during the year 2013 to 2014 related to soccer or football is related to ~74.

Below is the chart depicting the countries and their number of patent filing in the year 2013 to 2014:

In this Hungary patent number HU1200264A2 is granted for Football Ball Equipped with a Gps Device in February 2014 likewise so many innovative things have filed and being granted The trend of filing patents related to soccer or football is showing gradual increase compared to early period. Due to the development made in the game and technology have joined to make a remarkable note in filing patents and trademarks.

Conclusion

So many interesting patents were filed related to football. There should be new development and advance technologies that should pave the way for improvement of Intellectual property