submarine patent可以直译为“潜水艇专利”。

所谓“潜水艇专利”是指企业提出专利申请后，在非公开状态下潜伏数十年后突然生效的专利。从广义上讲，“潜水艇专利”有时也会表现为：在市场形成之前一直不为世人所知，而在市场形成后，专利权人却突然开始要求使用者支付授权费的专利。

其英文释义如下：

A submarine patent is a patent whose issuance and publication are intentionally delayed by the applicant for a long time, which can be several years, or a decade. This strategy requires a patent system where, first, patent applications are not published, and, second, patent term is measured from grant date, not from priority or filing date. In the United States, patent applications filed before November 2000 were not published and remained secret until they were granted. Analogous to a submarine, submarine patents could remain "under water" for long periods until they "emerged", surprising the relevant market. 

最初，“潜水艇专利”仅指基于美国的“专利保护期限自授权日起计算”和“专利授权前不予公布其专利申请”的专利制度而出现的一类专利。申请者通过反复修正故意地推迟专利的成立，等待着利用了其技术的产品被广泛普及。然后，当各种各样的企业采用并普及其专利产品时突然使专利成立，起诉其侵权行为并要求巨大的侵权费。由于它是钻入水面下后慢慢接近，突然出现后造成损失，所以称作“潜水艇专利”。

patent pirate也可以直译为“专利海盗”，它与“patent troll（专利怪物）”所指的内容相同。

它们是指那些将重心放在对其它公司提起专利诉讼的公司。他们拥有专利，但是从来没想过要实施，仅仅是寻找可能侵犯这些专利的公司，然后向他们表明收取专利使用费的意图或是提起专利侵权诉讼。利用潜水艇专利的人或公司有时也会被称为专利海盗。

以下为相关双语示例，供参考：

The problem with submarine patents is that they have been used to generate royalty incomes, by people who have been able to predict developments in a technology, rather than to protect their own developments. For example, an inventor or company may be able to predict the future direction of a particular technology, or the activities of their competitors. In doing so, a patent application could be filed in the US which is not allowed to proceed to grant, but rather is kept pending.

潜水艇专利的问题在于，它们被那些能够预测技术发展的人（而非保护自身开发成果的人）用来实现版税收入。例如，发明人或公司可能能够预测某一技术的未来发展方向或其竞争对手的活动。这样做的话，某一在美国提交的专利申请不会被允许给予授权，但会保持专利未决状态。