Can enterprises create patent barriers to provide benefits for enterprises, and can enterprises use patents to achieve industrial chain coverage?
This paper will analyze for you from the perspective of patent function: how can enterprises monopolize the market by using the behavior of patent control!
According to the provisions of the patent law, the patent office may prohibit or allow interested parties to carry out three acts of manufacturing, selling and using for the purpose of production and operation. That is to say, the patentee has the right to request the court to prohibit the unauthorized manufacture, sale and use of the patented product, and the patentee can obtain an implementation license after meeting the conditions of the patentee.
Obviously, manufacturing, selling and using constitute a complete commercial value chain of innovative products or innovative methods. When a company has a strong patent strength, it has a strong control over an industry. It can prohibit unauthorized manufacture, sale and use by law, and also get the benefit of patent license from manufacture, sale and use. It is true that people who get patents serve people, and those who lose patents serve people.
In the whole mobile communication industry, Qualcomm has always been at the top of the whole industrial chain because it owns 3G, 4G and 5G standard essential patents, and patent authorization is its important business model.
In the 3G era, Qualcomm can collect patent fees from the whole communication industry, including communication equipment manufacturers (manufacturing), terminal manufacturers (selling) and communication operators (using), all of which need to pay relatively high patent fees to Qualcomm, which is called "Qualcomm tax" by the industry, and this part of income becomes the main source of Qualcomm's profits. In this way, whether these communication companies make money or not, they must pay the patent license fee to Qualcomm. In this case, every company is equivalent to working for Qualcomm, including Huawei, OPPO, VIVO and Xiaomi.
According to relevant patent data, Qualcomm has the most patented CDMA technology (2G), with almost 90% patents. In the era of 3G network, Qualcomm also owns 27% of the patents. However, in the fields of 4G and 5G, the proportion of patents in Qualcomm is declining, with only 16% in 4G and only 8% in Qualcomm. It can be predicted that with the continuous decline of patent strength, the patent licensing fees that Qualcomm can get will also gradually decrease, and it will face increasing business pressure.
Through patents, we can control three key behaviors: manufacturing, selling and using. Therefore, when deploying patents, on the one hand, it is necessary to cover all the value links of the entire industrial chain and achieve one shot and one line; On the other hand, it is necessary to sweep a large area for the main stakeholders in all links, that is, to prevent the target stakeholders from escaping their own patents, so as to achieve the influence and control of the whole industry.
Just like hunters set up organs and other beasts when catching animals, patent protection layout and patent asset allocation are also a detailed and systematic design and deployment process for stakeholders in a specific range, which is quite critical to the realization of business goals of enterprises and cannot be ignored.
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