It is easy to understand that patents vary greatly according to their importance. You can simply compare it with stocks. Some stocks can have a price close to that of 300 yuan, and there will also be ST stocks with only 1 yuan. So people who also own 10000 shares are not necessarily millionaires. The same is true of patents. Judging who has the right to speak and strength in intellectual property rights depends not only on quantity but also on scientific indicators.
Different technology industries have different evaluation indexes for the importance of patents. For example, in the field of medicine, which is also very sensitive to patents, the core patent is the patent of pharmaceutical compounds. Compared with the trunk of a tree, other pharmaceutical ingredients patents and use patents are relatively secondary. Judging the patent strength in the medical field depends on whether you have a compound patent for hot-selling drugs in a specific market.
However, the communication field has its own characteristics. Communication is an industrial field with standards as its core. Chip vendors, equipment vendors and operators should all operate the industrial chain around communication standards. According to the characteristics of communication industry, it is very important to protect the patent of communication standard framework structure, so judging whether an international standard has independent intellectual property rights depends on whether it has standard framework patent. Specific to TD-SCDMA, it depends on who has the patent to protect the TD-SCDMA standard framework of "TDD+cdma++ smart antenna" at the earliest.
As far as patents are concerned, the technical scheme with fewer technical features has a wider scope of protection, so it is also very important to protect the underlying technology under the standard framework. Specifically, TD-SCDMA, such as TDD time division duplex technology patent, CDMA technology patent and smart antenna technology patent, are collectively referred to as the patents of the underlying technology. When analyzing basic technology patents, it is very important to consider the validity period of patent rights. In order to balance the interests of R&D and the public, the intellectual property system stipulates that the patent right has a clear validity period. The validity period of invention patents in China is 20 years, and it takes a long time for the underlying technology to be put forward, developed and incorporated into the third generation mobile standard, so how long the remaining validity period is very important. For example, the earliest CDMA China patent granted to China enterprises is 1990, and the patent term will be 20 10.
Others need to solve many specific technical problems for the overall operation of a communication system, and there will be a large number of patents to solve specific problems, such as solving the interference problem between different communication systems and the new typhoon-resistant structure of the antenna. The number of such patents is the largest, but there are many alternatives to technical solutions, so it is not as important as the underlying technology patents and standard framework patents.
Dividing the patents in communication field according to the underlying technology patents, standard framework patents and realized technology patents is helpful to analyze and evaluate the patent competition situation and draw an objective conclusion of the competition situation.
1 TD-SCDMA standard with independent intellectual property rights in China.
The patent cn 97 104039.7—— "Time division duplex synchronous CDMA wireless communication system with smart antenna and its communication method" applied by Beijing Xinwei Communication Technology Co., Ltd. in 1997 is the earliest patent for protecting TD-SCDMA standard framework, which is the basis of TD-SCDMA standard protection.
Moreover, under the framework of TD-SCDMA standard, domestic institutions have also applied for a large number of patents, especially after the establishment of TD-SCDMA alliance in 2003, the patent emphasis trend of domestic key enterprises under TDD time division duplex system is obvious.
China's communication industry has embarked on the road of independent innovation since TD-SCDMA.
CDMA code division multiple access (CDMA) is an important spectrum utilization technology and the basic technology of the third generation mobile communication. As can be seen from the figure 1, before 1990- 1996 put forward TD-SCDMA, the related technical field of CDMA in China was almost blank, but it was from 1997 that the independent innovation in the communication field in China began to flourish, and the domestic patent application in China began in 2000.