As a landmark event, it contains the deep change information of industry and investment logic, which needs all parties to face up to.
AVIC Lithium Battery has also responded quickly since then: "The company insists on independent research and development, and the products provided to customers have undergone a comprehensive risk investigation by a professional intellectual property team. The company is convinced that its products do not infringe the intellectual property rights of others. "
How much impact will it bring?
More importantly, a basic factual basis of this case is that the subject matter involved is all products of AVIC lithium batteries.
This means that the patent war initiated by Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. is not a whim, but a full-dimensional dismantling of all products of AVIC lithium batteries, on the basis of which an evidence chain is formed and fixed.
From the scale of the case, the degree of preparation to the intensity of investment, there are various indications that contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. is serious about AVIC lithium batteries.
From the point of view of AVIC lithium battery, the final result of the case will be related to its life and death. Faced with a life-and-death proposition, no one or company will let go of any possibility, and its legal response strategy will be refined to every link.
From the basic legal knowledge, it can be inferred that AVIC Lithium will definitely start with procedural issues, such as filing a jurisdictional objection to the court first; Then, based on the plaintiff's rights, an administrative application for patent invalidation is filed, which leads to related administrative litigation; It is not even ruled out that it will file a counterclaim against Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. based on its own patent pool.
Judging from the patent reserves of both the original defendant and the defendant, they are not in the same order of magnitude. According to our database query, according to incomplete statistics, the number of patents published by Contemporary Amp Technology Co., Ltd. currently exceeds 5,000, while that of AVIC Lithium Battery exceeds 1350.
The above figure shows the distribution of patent applications of the two companies respectively, and the numerical range is in the top ten of the main categories. The database is Patentics.
In addition, from the perspective of patent application and protection strategy, we analyzed contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. in the past reports, which particularly emphasized the accuracy of patent pool-that is, point coverage around a certain process or technology. This also means that for lawyers of AVIC Lithium Industry, it is bound to face great engineering challenges when dismantling, defending or even invalidating the rights base of Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. involved in the case.
According to the insurance number search, from 20 19 to June this year, there were more than 20 passenger car models equipped with power battery products, including Aion S, Yidong BEV, Benben EV, Wuling Hong Guang MINEV and GAC IA5, totaling more than 100,000.
Main models equipped with AVIC lithium batteries.
Although contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. did not disclose the specific claim amount, according to the above data, combined with the actual sales amount and profit rate, the amount of the subject matter involved can actually be roughly calculated.
But for the defendant AVIC Lithium Battery, the biggest test in this case is not the potential possibility of compensation, but the survival problem mentioned above:
1. Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. is likely to apply to the court for behavior preservation.
2. All products are involved in this case.
Based on these two basic logics or facts, in fact, the biggest risk faced by AVIC lithium batteries is the stagnation of production and sales, and the subversion and reconstruction of the whole process (power batteries involve a whole set of electrochemical systems, which will affect the whole body).
Of course, it must be pointed out that behavior preservation, as a right relief measure with strict starting requirements, has sufficient defense space for AVIC Lithium Battery; At the same time, as enterprises in the same industry, the two companies will definitely involve general technology in the manufacturing process, so the problem-solving ideas left to AVIC lithium battery lawyers are also diverse.
Legal issues will eventually be solved by the judicial department. As observers and investors, more importantly, through this patent dispute phenomenon, we need to get a more essential content: China's new energy industry is jumping from the era of cost competition to the era of core technology competition.
In order to understand this, we need to replace the perspective from the macro and individual levels:
As we all know, technological innovation is the fundamental driving force for economic growth. As we all know, technological innovation must blossom and bear fruit in leading industries in order to stimulate economic growth to the greatest extent. But what is more neglected by the outside world is that the development of leading industries driven by technological innovation cannot be separated from the economic law determined by Coase's law.
What is leading industry and Coase theorem?
The so-called leading industries refer to those industries that are innovative enough, play a leading and driving role in the process of economic growth, play an important role in the whole industrial chain and have strong diffusion effects. For example, steel in the early stage of industrialization; For example, real estate and cars in the mass consumption stage; Another example is the new energy industry where contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. and AVIC lithium battery are located under the theme of carbon neutrality promoted by the current wind of heaven and earth.
The so-called Coase theorem means that as long as the property right is clear and the transaction cost is zero or very small, no matter who gives the property right at the beginning, the final result of market equilibrium is efficient and Pareto optimization of resource allocation is realized.
Its premise is "clear property rights", otherwise entrepreneurs will lose their fundamental motivation and all technological innovations will only become paper articles. Just like innovative drugs, biotech companies spend as much as $2 billion per 10/0 year on R&D in exchange for drug listing, and are prepared to recover the cost and make a certain profit during the patent protection period. If other pharmaceutical companies are prepared to ignore patents and reverse R&D at this time, who will have the motivation to do innovation and basic research?
In fact, from the textile machinery era to the new energy era, the patent dispute around the leading industries has never stopped. The quarrel between Britain and the United States about Jenny spinning machine and Bessemer steelmaking method, the camera battlefield between Honeywell and Minolta between the United States and Japan, and the love between Apple and Samsung on the smart phone track between the United States and South Korea. ...
Therefore, we must realize that intellectual property rights represent technological innovation, the core competitiveness of an enterprise and even an industry. The development and commercialization of core technologies is a long trial and error process, which contains huge sunk costs. Without the protection of core technology, the whole industry will fall into the historical retrogression of bad money driving out good money.
For individuals, the significance of protecting core technology is not only to recover the loss itself; It also lies in the confirmation of the industry position with technical ability as the core and the maintenance of the upstream and downstream interests of the industrial chain. These first major cases can illustrate:
For example, in February 2020, Huawei sued Verizon (the largest typical operator in the United States), accusing the company of infringing the necessary patents of its optical transmission network and other communication technology standards, demanding compensation of $654.38 billion. Recently, the case ended in the form of "reconciliation" (private compensation). This case not only sets the tone for the global patent authorization of Huawei's 4G/5G technology, but also reaffirms the right to speak of China's ICT industry in the international arena.
Return to the new energy industry: Why can Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. achieve the first power battery shipment in the world and establish the leading position of China power battery industry in the world? The important support is patented technology. The figures of R&D investment will not lie: from 20 15 to 2020, the accumulated R&D investment of this industry leader will exceed 1 10 billion yuan; By the end of 2020, the company has more than 5,500 R&D technicians, with a master's degree or above 1.500, and 677/kloc-0 patents have been authorized and are being applied at home and abroad.
On the one hand, technical strength is reflected in the depth and breadth of R&D capability and patent pool, and also in the protection of intellectual property rights. In the past, we said that "third-rate enterprises make products, second-rate enterprises make brands, and first-class enterprises make standards". What is a standard? The standard is a technical moat built by a series of patents. On this patent moat, the basic interests of an industry are connected-without the support of patent protection, there is no way to talk about industry standards.
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. previously won the patent lawsuit with Taffield, which also reflected this point. This phenomenon also carries its inherent investment value, which is synchronous with the evolution of its capital market value.
It can be predicted that the patent lawsuit filed by Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. against AVIC lithium battery is not the first and will not be the last. In the future, there will be intellectual property litigation in global business competition.
In a sense, under the background that technological innovation has become the main tone of today's era, the emergence of major intellectual property cases on core technology protection proves that an industry is jumping from cost and scale competition to technology and quality competition. I understand the evolution of the investment logic of industries and enterprises contained in this signal, and I also understand the underlying logic of the lawsuit between Contemporary Amp Technology Co., Ltd. and AVIC Lithium Battery.