Nowadays, if we stop to think about it, satellite technology is all around and have become the support of modern digital life, helping people to keep in touch (GPS technology) or monitoring the earth for any kind of changes.
Today we take inspiration for our “Patents world” section from a video developed by the EPO (European Patents Office) talking about this great and fascinating cientific field: satellite technology.
This is a huge industry that remains a “key strategic sector” for a lot of countries and which is the base of global communications, weather forecasting among many other vital aspects of modern life.
What is true, as appointed from the video, is that satellite technologies are among the most complex technologies known today, but their use on “earth” represent a growing market. That is why “satellite technology related” patents have nearly quadruplied in the last 15 years: the US and Europe being the leaders, with Russian federation and Israel in a good position too.
Space has a crucial role for economy and society, as they generate significant economic benefits thanks to improved economic efficiency and productivity. Satellite technologies can be applied to many fields: for example, Kinexon CEO showa how their system uses multiple small sensors acting like satellites for high-precision localisation indoors, with applications for sports coaching or in hospitals.
The video shows different innovative companies (like Giaura, Eomap, Kinexon) using this technology for different purposes. The certain thing is that the development work to advance this kind of technology is, like most of the times, very expensive: protecting this effort and ideas through patents is essential to save all the hard work from competitors and gain the fair returns.
The EPO’s database shows more than 1900 patent applications in space vehicles and equipment category, and patent applications in space-related fields continue to grow.
If you are curious, we attach an example taken directly from free-to-use database Espacenet: “Pseudo-noise correlator for GPS spread-spectrum receiver“, inventes by Sanjai Kohli and Steven Chen, winners of the European Inventor Award 2010 in the “Non-European Countries” category.
