Making sense of the internet of things

The internet of things (IoT)—a catch-all term for the inter-connected devices that send data to and from each other—is a major, rising, market. International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts the market size by 2020 to be $7.1 trillion. There will, according to this prediction, be tens of billions of installed devices. The prediction may be optimistic—one company has described IoT as the most-hyped emerging technology of 2014—but we should still expect widespread and rapid growth in the sector over the next ten years. IoT will be an area of rich opportunity for businesses in the coming years, and especially for inventors and patent owners.