July the 9th, 2024 – The Rimac Group (Rimac Grupa) headed by entrepreneur Mate Rimac is Croatia’s number one in terms of patent applications.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, according to the latest available data from 2022, companies within the Rimac Group have a total of more than a hundred patent applications to their name. That puts the Rimac Group in a firm first place in terms of the number of internationally applied patents originating from Croatia. Given that last year they reported a significantly higher number compared to 2022, it can be assumed that this statistic will be even more pronounced when last year’s data is released, reports Autonet.
Patents can be applied for in almost all countries across the world, and the Rimac Group has the most applications in the EU, USA and China, as these are its main markets or production countries for the sort of technology it makes.
It’s important to emphasise that the Rimac Group not only patents technologies for their own hypercars, but also for technology developed by Rimac Technology for global car manufacturers – for example, in the sector of making systems for electric drives and battery systems.
arduous and expensive processes
One of the latest inventions from the Rimac Group, for which the company filed a patent application, is a system for the extremely fast detection of insulation breakdown in electrical circuits. Consequently, their system allows for the possibility of its quick and safe shutdown if necessary.
This is particularly interesting in the context of high voltage, which is present in electric cars. In this particular procedure, the process of patent recognition lasted approximately three and a half years, which – as strange as it may sound – is in fact very short in international terms.
“The patenting procedure is extremely complex, time-consuming and expensive. There are many reasons for that. The main factor is the large number of patent applications that are submitted annually, the number of which as a rule increases every year, and patent offices must study each application in detail to see if it meets the conditions for the recognition of patent protection.
Studying all of the above actually means that they have to compare that invention with all existing technical solutions. They need to be compared with the so-called state of the art, for which they use special comprehensive databases of global patents, patent applications and professional technical literature that number more than 100 million documents.
If the invention is new, inventive and industrially applicable in relation to being state of the art, it will be recognised as a patent,” Branimir Puškarić, Intellectual Property Manager at Rimac Technology, explained to Autonet.
Throughout the the process of patenting, the confidentiality of all of the data is extremely important because, as a rule, any public announcement of an invention before the filing of a patent application automatically eliminates the invention from the possibility of patenting. This eliminates the possibility of licensing it to third parties, who will then exploit it commercially.
With the aim of preserving intellectual property (IP) within the company, Rimac Technology has established a special IP Legal team made up of highly qualified experts in their fields. These individuals cover the main fields of intellectual property protection – which few other companies in Croatia or even the wider region have.
