Self-use technology refers to the technology developed by enterprises that will be used in enterprise products. An innovative product or project often produces not one but many innovative technological points.
First of all, we should sort out the technical points of products or projects, sort out all the innovative technical points, evaluate the importance of these innovative technical points, and decide whether to apply for a patent, the type of patent and the scope of protection according to the evaluation results. For technical schemes involving safety regulations and standards, they can be listed as core technologies for key protection, because these technologies are often the only way for product development and can be laid out by roadblocks. For innovative core technologies, sugar-coated layout can be adopted, that is, the combination of core patents and peripheral patents.
2. Avoidance technology
Avoidance technology refers to the technical scheme designed by competitors that is similar to our technical scheme but not within the scope of patent protection. It can be used as an alternative to our own technical scheme to achieve similar technical effects. The patent layout of self-use technology is to prevent competitors from copying the company's innovative technology, and the patent layout of circumvention technology is to prevent competitors from imitating the company's innovative technology, thus forming a certain technological monopoly.
The layout of circumvention technology patents can be brainstormed. Around the patents of the above-mentioned self-use technologies, R&D personnel and product planners are organized to design circumvention schemes, and then the feasibility of each circumvention scheme is evaluated, and then whether to apply for patents is decided according to the evaluation results and the resources that can be invested.
The patent layout scheme of circumvention technology needs to be determined according to the importance, innovation degree, protection scope and substitutability of self-use technology patents. When a self-use technology is the key technology, but the scope of patent protection is narrow or there are many alternatives, it is necessary to adopt wall layout or even carpet layout, apply for patents for all evasive technologies that competitors may adopt, and build as many obstacles as possible for competitors' product development.
3. Iterative technology
Iterative technology refers to the technology that improves and innovates the above-mentioned self-use technology and intends to be used in the next generation products of the company. The patent layout of iterative technology is an important guarantee to ensure that the company continues to lead in this technology or product.
On the one hand, we can explore the source of iterative technology according to the company's short-term technical planning, on the other hand, we can organize R&D personnel and product planners to brainstorm around the shortcomings of self-use technology and design various preliminary iterative schemes.
Because the patent layout of iterative technology will generally exceed the company's existing research and development progress, we can apply for a patent from the direction of great improvement first. As for the detailed scheme, we can apply for a patent with the subsequent research and development progress.
4. Competitive technology
Patent layout is a continuous process. In the process of patent layout, we should not only pay attention to the layout of the company's own technology, but also pay attention to the technical trends of competitors at all times.
On the one hand, we can monitor the patent publication of competitors. Once the patent of similar technology is published, it is necessary to analyze the shortcomings of its patented technology with R&D personnel immediately and make a good patent layout for its possible improvement direction. We can also patent these technical details according to its patented technical scheme.
On the other hand, track the product release dynamics of competitors. Because the specific details of the product are usually not announced when the product is released, we can guess the possible technical scheme according to some functional introductions when the product is released, and then make the corresponding patent layout.