An Australian man has been issued with an innovation patent for the wheel after setting out to test the workability of a new national patent system.

John Keogh was issued the innovation patent for a “circular transportation facilitation device” under a patent system introduced in May 2001.

The innovation patent is designed to provide a quick, easy and cheap alternative to a traditional patent for small businesses. It replaces the petty patent in Australia and is even easier to process. Applications for innovation patents can even be made online.

While a standard patent must be drafted by a lawyer with engineering or science qualifications and must also demonstrate a significant advance, the innovation patent need only to show an advance.


Keogh, who is a freelance patent lawyer himself, says that he applied for the patent in order to test this new class of new patents. He says that innovation patents are not examined in detail by the Australian patent office.

“The patent office would be required to issue a patent for everything,” he told The Age newspaper. “All they’re doing is putting a rubber stamp on it.”

Patently confusing

The Australian office controlling patents, IP Australia, said that Keogh’s innovation patent would not stand if tested in court. However, some still suggest that the innovation patent may be misleading.

“Calling it an innovation patent merely serves to confuse the issue,” says Geoff Sargent, assistant director of the UK Patent Office. “It’s not a patent as would be understood in most countries.”

Sargent says that most people want something that will stand up to scrutiny later. “So far the feedback seems to have been pretty catastrophically bad,” he says.