When I was growing up, a Mercedes was considered to be a well-made status symbol. When I was in college, my experience at a summer job stocking spare parts at an auto dealer who sold Mercedes and another make of German car seemed to bear this out. Other than hood ornaments, for which we placed several orders a week (no doubt due to the predilection of 12-year-old-boys to help themselves to those items), there wasn’t much call for new Mercedes parts, presumably attesting to the quality of the vehicles. The same was not true of the other make of car.
So I was somewhat surprised when I saw one of those annoying internet advertisements that run on our screens when we’re trying to watch something else. This one is for Mercedes, and pitches its products from the angle that since the company has a lot of patents – eighty thousand, according to the advertisement – the company must be a true innovator.
First, I’m surprised that Mercedes feels it needs to advertise at all, but far be it for me to second-guess the company’s market research.
Second, I’m surprised about the number mentioned. The bland statement that the company has 80,000 patents, without more clarification, is apparently meant to imply that the company has devised 80,000 separate, patentable inventions. But the advertisement, which is in English and presumably ran in the USA, doesn’t explain if 80K represents only US patents or all patents worldwide, nor does it explain if the reference is to all patents granted over the years or only the company’s currently active portofolio. It doesn’t mention if that number includes industrial designs, which in the USA are called “design patents” and which outside the USA merely need to be novel (no inventive step requirement); or if the figure includes utility models, which are granted in Germany but not the USA. And it doesn’t mention if those “patents” are all assigned to Mercedes-Benz or also to Daimler-Benz or Daimler-Chyrsler.
As of this morning, a quick check of the USPTO database for patents assigned to “Mercedes” or “Daimler” lists 4,238 patents, including design patents, issued since 1976; if one looks only for patents assigned to Mercedes that number drops to 969. Presumably there aren’t another 75,000+ pre-1976 US patents lurking about, so the eighty-thousand number mentioned in the commercial apparently refers to all patents issued everywhere since the company’s inception, to all predecessors and successors interest of the Mercedes name.
This makes the “we have 80K patents” pitch sound lame: why should the company try imply that has developed 80,000 patentable inventions, when in fact it’s really talking about a far smaller number of different inventions, plus merely novel designs, registered in a number of different countries over the past 100+ years? And why imply that all those patents are current, when many of those inventions are now passe? Even if it only has a few hundred patentable inventions to its credit over the years, that’s still a considerable number and shows a commitment to improving its products. In this case the puffery merely detracts from the company’s name.
Finally, in this day and age, I’m surprised that anyone would launch a commercial that implies that lots of patents necessarily means lots of innovation, and I’m particularly surprised that Mercedes of all companies would do so, given the demographic sector to which it’s marketing itself. If you can afford a Mercedes, there’s a good chance you work in high-tech; and if you work in high-tech, you know that at least since the State Street Bank decision in 1997 and up until recently, in certain technology sectors it was easy to obtain US patents on obvious or even known inventions. I suspect that’s not the case with most of the work that automobile companies do, and that most of their patents are granted for real, patentable inventions. But there are a lot of crappy patents out there, and they (or more properly, the enforcement of them) has given the whole patent system a bad name. I'm amazed that Mercedes has chosen to associate itself with that.
For what it’s worth, the running of the ad has neither increased nor decreased the likelihood of my buying a Mercedes the next time I buy a car.