Mining Inventions – Spotted at AIMEX 2013

To keep abreast of changes within the mining industry, we recently attended AIMEX (Asia-Pacific International Mining Exhibition) 2013 at the Sydney Showground. AIMEX is always very interesting and provides a smorgasbord of new technology, innovative ideas and industry trends. We were also fortunate to have a couple of our clients’ exhibiting and were pleased to see a strong presence from the Hunter region.

Trends in Patenting in the Mining Industry

When inspecting the exhibitor’s products we noticed a great number of products either being marked as “Patent Pending” or Patented”. We were pleased to see patent rights being used as a marketing tool to promote the innovative and propriety nature of the particular product. Overall – it was great to see increased intellectual property awareness in the mining industry.

This reflects the trends we have seen in our practice where a number of smaller mining technology companies are getting “serious” with research and development and seeking to capitalise on that research and development by filing patent applications in Australia and overseas.

Presence from Asia

We also noticed that AIMEX appears to have an ever increasing presence from Southeast Asia, and the Chinese equipment suppliers appear to be supplying equipment of increased sophistication albeit perhaps not yet at the level of that designed and produced in the west.

Nevertheless, it is a timely reminder for Australian mining technology developers that competition is increasingly originating overseas with China rapidly becoming one of the world’s largest patent filers. Accordingly, it has never been more important to secure your mining inventions by seeking patent protection.

Mining Patent Specialist

If you are interested in filing a patent application, please do not hesitate to contact Caska IP as we are one of the leading specialist patent attorney firms for mining and engineering related inventions.