Eccentric British inventor, Trevor Baylis, has called for a change in protection for inventors and others who file their designs under patent laws.

Mr Baylis, inventor of the wind-up radio, has written to the business secretary, Lord Mandleson, asking that the theft of intellectual property become a criminal offence.

"If I was to nick your car, which is worth £10,000, say, I could go to jail," Mr Baylis told the BBC.

"But if I were to nick your patent, which is worth a million pounds, you'd have to sue me."

Under current laws, inventors have to sue those they believe have stolen from them, incurring all the legal costs along the way. Mr Baylis' believes the cost of pursuing a patent theft claim can be overly expensive for lone inventors.

"If I was a colossal company, or indeed another country, that had stolen your invention, how could you find a million pounds a day to take me to court?" added Mr Baylis.

If patent theft was criminalised, much like copyright theft, it would mean a complete overhaul of the patent system but the state, rather than the inventor, would incur legal costs.

Mr Baylis believes that, under current law, the abilities of inventors are not a primary concern of the UK Public Limited Companies (plc) body.

"I believe the plc should stand behind those courageous individuals whose ideas can change all our lives both commercially and socially."

There were approximately 7.2m patents in force worldwide in 2008 and patent experts believe the complexities of patent cases are far too intricate for strict criminal laws to police.

"Patent infringement is not remotely like flogging knock-off CDs. Honest, decent people running reputable businesses infringe patents," said one member of the Chartered Institute of Patent AttorneyRowlands' Chris Hacking comments that trying to criminalise patent infringement whilst perhaps superficially attractive would have a number of very real drawbacks not the least of which is that proving wilful infringement would place a very heavy burden on the prosecution. More practical might well be the US approach which exposes a wilful infringer to the possibility of triple damages….a substantial disincentive to reckless infringement. To prove that the infringer was not deliberate in its infringement the defendant has to show that he took advice from competent patent counsel that what he was doing did not infringe the patent in question. A similar approach in the UK could perhaps provide some reassurance to Trevor Bayliss.