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Date: | Tue, 28 Feb 2006 13:25:57 EST |
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Greetings all,
I took a look the other day at US patents to see what was happening on the
lead-free front and senses the size of the minefield was being laid out for
future legal battles as lead-free products are being rolled out.
I did a quick search using the limiters of:
Lead free OR leadfree OR lead-free AND solder AND circuit,
It is admittedly not perfect but it was done in a manner to to try and focus
the search on electronics related filings and hopefully filter out things
like paint, gasoline and pipe.
The same search was performed for each of the 14 years back to 1992 which is
about when the lead-free campaign began.
Here are the results:
Year No. of patents
1992 = 3
1993 = 9
1994 = 8
1995 = 21
1996 = 11
1997 = 13
1998 = 20
1999 = 25
2000 = 32
2001 = 58
2002 = 92
2003 = 135
2004 = 165
2005 = 159
Total = 751
It appears that there was an early surge around the time the US government
first expressed a willingness to listen to the argument for a band on lead and
then a slow down that roughly corresponds with US government's realization
that there was no scientific evidence that lead in electronic solder was a
problem and then another surge in patents that has accelerated since the EU made
known their intentions.
Now here is the kicker...
There are more than 1100 published US patent applications currently pending
issue using the same search criteria. The number of suppressed US patent
fillings and foreign patents would surely have added significantly to the tally.
Best wishes,
Joe
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