Подводные патенты: стратегия скрытого патентования.

A submarine patent is a patent whose issuance and publication are intentionally delayed by the applicant for a long time, which can be several years, or a decade. This strategy requires a patent system where, first, patent applications are not published, and, second, patent term is measured from grant date, not from priority or filing date. In the United States, patent applications filed before November 2000 were not published and remained secret until they were granted. Analogous to a submarine, submarine patents could remain "under water" for long periods until they "emerged", surprising the relevant market. Persons or companies making use of submarine patents are sometimes referred to as patent pirates. The phrase is occasionally used more generally for any patent used in patent ambush.

A notable case of a single submarine patent is the George B. Selden automobile design, applied for in 1879 and issued in 1895, which led to the creation of the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers. Gilbert Hyatt was awarded a patent claiming an invention pre dating both Texas Instruments and Intel, describing a "microcontroller". The patent was later invalidated, but not before substantial royalties were paid out. He also still has two even wider patents still pending, also dating from the same period. Jerome H. Lemelson filed many applications that became submarine patents. He and his heirs have collected over $1.3 billion (U. S.) in royalties. In 2004 Lemelson's estate was defeated in a notable court case involving Symbol Technologies and Cognex Corporation, which sought (and received) a ruling that 76 claims under Lemelson's machine vision patents were unenforceable. Lemelson's estate appealed for a review by the full circuit en banc. On November 16, 2005, the full court declined to review the case, and, citing "prejudice to the public as a whole", extended the original unenforceability ruling to all claims under the patents in question.