Invention and IP

Why e-textile IP goes wrong

E-textile inventions rarely sit in one discipline. The novelty is often where a textile construction meets a circuit, a sensor or an algorithm, which is exactly where IP is most easily missed or poorly protected.

Our peer-reviewed research into e-textile commercialisation identified intellectual property literacy as one of the main barriers to scaling, and found that general institutional IP support often falls short for niche, cross-disciplinary technologies like e-textiles. Two examples from that research show how costly the gap can be.

• Assuming nothing is patentable. One company launched a product built from existing development boards, assuming the combination fell outside patent protection. It received an infringement notice from a competitor shortly after launch, and the licence it then had to agree restricted what it could build.
• Publishing before protecting. A university spin-out found it couldn’t fully commercialise its own innovation, because prior art in its team’s earlier papers had been missed by an IP office without e-textile expertise.

The research recommended structured IP support built specifically for smaller e-textile businesses, covering invention disclosure, prior art analysis and freedom to operate. That is the support WearNex provides. Read the research summary →

Lynch et al. (2024). Breaking Barriers in E-Textile Production: Industry-Driven Solutions for Scaling. E-Textiles 2024, 71–77.

IP literacy across a cross-disciplinary team

In our experience, IP knowledge varies widely across all the disciplines found in an e-textile team. Hardware engineers are usually the most familiar with patents and claims, garment and design teams tend to know design rights best, and software and data science teams are often the least engaged with the patent landscape. Inventions that come from where those disciplines meet are the easiest to overlook.

The same gaps show up in invention disclosures. Disclosures from mixed teams often leave out what a patent attorney needs most, which is the technical problem being solved, the advantages over prior art and the alternative ways the invention could be made. That leads to costly back and forth with the attorney and longer timelines. It’s harder still when the attorney’s own background is in a different field, such as software or mechanical engineering, and the invention depends on a knit structure or a textile electrode.

The specialist role most companies can’t afford

Larger technology companies, particularly in the US, employ applied patent engineers or technical specialists. These are hybrid roles that sit between engineering and patent counsel. They find patentable ideas early, co-write disclosures with several embodiments, shape claims around the product roadmap and support attorneys through prosecution. That gives stronger, more commercially useful patents, at a lower overall cost than sending every question to outside counsel.

Most start-ups and SMEs can’t justify a full-time hire, and technical leaders who try to cover IP alongside product delivery and fundraising often find it slips until after launch. WearNex fills that role on a fractional basis, bringing specialist IP support in at the points in development where it matters most.

What we do

We are not a firm of patent attorneys and don’t give legal advice. We work alongside your patent attorney, or introduce you to one with relevant experience, so the technical and legal work fit together.

Claim charts

A claim chart sets each element of a patent claim beside the matching feature of a product, or the matching disclosure in a piece of prior art. It’s one of the most useful tools in IP work. It shows whether a product may infringe a patent, whether a patent may be invalid, or how strongly a patent covers a competitor’s product.

E-textile claim charts need someone who can read a claim about a knit structure, a conductive pathway or a signal processing step and find exactly where it appears in a garment, a circuit or a data pipeline. We prepare claim charts for freedom-to-operate, licensing and portfolio work, and, where needed, as part of our expert witness work in disputes.

Beyond patents

Patents aren’t the only way to protect a wearable or e-textile product. Depending on the product, we help clients consider the following.

• Registered designs for garments, modules, housings and app interfaces, which garment teams often know best and which are far cheaper than patents
• Utility models in countries that offer them, such as Germany and China
• Trade secrets and know-how for processes and algorithms better kept confidential than published
• Trade marks for product and brand names

Open tools for the e-textile community

Patent landscape studies are routine in mature fields such as pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and telecommunications, but none had been published for e-textiles. Commercial patent analytics platforms are usually too expensive for research groups and spin-outs, and patent searching is rarely taught in STEM doctoral training. So most researchers and small companies work without a clear picture of what has already been claimed.

To help change that, WearNex partnered with a practising European patent attorney, Samuel Bird of Hanna & Bird IP, to develop a reproducible, scripting-based method for mapping the e-textile patent landscape. It’s designed for researchers and SMEs without patent training or paid software, and we’ve released it openly for anyone to use.

• The method. A single SQL query runs on the free Google Patents Public Datasets on BigQuery. It combines a tightly scoped search of the patent classes most densely populated with e-textile filings, a broader search across adjacent textile, electronics, sensing and garment classes, and a keyword search to catch filings classified in unexpected places, while filtering out unrelated “false friends” such as network fabric and optical fibre.
• The dataset. A snapshot of 45,582 e-textile patent families with priority dates from 2013 to 2026, openly archived and citable.
• Free to use. Anyone can inspect, re-run and adapt the query for their own landscape studies, whether in e-textiles, smart clothing, wearable electronics or other cross-disciplinary fields.

Researchers can use it to check prior art before publishing. Spin-outs and SMEs can arrive at their patent attorney with a structured view of the landscape, so attorney time goes on legal analysis rather than preliminary searching. Formal freedom-to-operate opinions still need a patent attorney. If you are assessing a company or its IP before investing, see our technical due diligence work.

Bird, S. and Lynch, M.J. (2026). E-Textile Patent Landscape Dataset (2013–2026): Patent Families Identified via a Reproducible CPC and Keyword Search.

Read about the method and how to use the dataset →

Our record

WearNex founder Michael John Lynch is one of the UK’s most prolific inventors. Patent analytics firm GreyB ranked him joint third on its list of the Top 50 British Inventors with the Most Patents (July 2025), level with the inventor in third place. Across his career, he is named inventor on 242 patent and design filings in wearable technology, smart garments and e-textiles, across a number of jurisdictions. View the full inventor portfolio →

Questions

What is a claim chart?

A claim chart is a table that compares each element of a patent claim with a product or a piece of prior art. It’s used to assess infringement, validity, freedom to operate and licensing.

What should an invention disclosure include?

The technical problem the invention solves, how it works, what makes it better than existing approaches, and the alternative ways it could be made or used. Missing these points is the most common reason attorneys have to come back with questions.

Can I patent a wearable that uses off-the-shelf components?

Often, yes. A new combination of existing parts can be patentable if it solves a problem in a new and non-obvious way. Using existing parts can also infringe others’ patents, so it’s worth checking both before launch.

Should I patent my research before publishing?

If it may have commercial value, consider filing before you publish, because your own paper can become prior art against you. Speak to your university’s IP office or a patent attorney first.

How can I search for e-textile patents without a paid database?

Our openly released search method runs on the free Google Patents Public Datasets, and the archived dataset of 45,582 e-textile patent families can be downloaded and cited. Free tools such as Espacenet and Google Patents are also useful for individual searches.

What is freedom to operate?

Freedom to operate is whether you can make and sell a product without infringing someone else’s patents. A patent attorney gives the formal opinion, and we support it with technical analysis and claim charts.

Is WearNex a patent attorney?

No. We provide specialist technical IP support and work alongside patent attorneys, who handle legal advice, drafting and filing.