As a competitive swimmer, I took a few minutes out of my day to look at the changes that have occurred to one of the few pieces of equipment I routinely use – goggles. I was surprised to discover that there had been over 60 US patents issued since 1995. All to Herman Chiang of Taiwan.
Herman’s patents are a common example of bad intellectual property strategy, but before I get into why, I need to give a very brief background on the last forty years.
