ResMed, who are to thank for stopping your dad snoring the house down, are in hot water over their AirSense10.
Background: ResMed, short for Respiratory Medicine, is an Aussie-born sleep tech company worth a massive $57.24 billion. It's famous for developing the first continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device. Ya know, the machine that looks like the mask Bane wears in The Dark Knight Rises and stops your dad snoring the house down.
What happened: They've got a 30+ year history of treating sleep apnea problems, but one of their best-selling products is the AirSense10. And it brings in a big chunk of ResMed's $4.3 billion revenue.
What else: The AirSense10 might blow cool air up your nose, but it's landed ResMed in hot water. NYU - aka New York University - reckons ResMed ripped off the science from 7 patents owned by the uni...and used it to form the AirSense10. Now, NYU wants unpaid royalties, interest and costs, but ResMed say they'll defend their innovation.
A patent gives an inventor the legal right to stop other people from making or using their invention. But you can't slap a patent on anything. It needs to be new, useful and innovative.
Patents give inventors protection, and can give companies a competitive advantage. Amazon has 2,244 patents in the US, and IBM has 9,130 patents in the US. ResMed has over 8,000. And it means they've developed something that can't be used by other companies.
If the inventor finds out someone else has used their designs or inventions without getting permission first, they can sue whoever stole their ideas.
Sign up for Flux and join 100,000 members of the Flux family
