"Gree Jinbei, open it!" This air conditioner is named Jinbei because it looks like a shell. With the voice instruction of Wen Kuangyu, director of the Intellectual Property Office of Zhuhai Gree Electric Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Gree Electric), it started its own working mode. Walking into the exhibition hall of Gree Electric, two highlights attracted the attention of reporters. First, new electrical products independently developed; The second is the patent wall displaying tens of thousands of patent certificates.
Today, Gree Electric has submitted more than 40,000 patent applications, and the number of patent applications is increasing rapidly every year. So, how does Gree Electric improve the quality of patents? What role does patent quality play in enterprise innovation? Wen Kuangyu said in an interview with China Intellectual Property News: "Patent quality is the lifeline of enterprise innovation and plays a vital role in the subsequent patent operation and patent protection. Only by focusing on improving the quality of patents can enterprises maximize the value of patents and transform them into market competitiveness. "
Quality is the lifeline.
"By purchasing technology, you can only buy technologies that have been eliminated abroad, and the real core technology cannot be bought. Only by taking the creative road of independent innovation can we master the core technology. " Dong Mingzhu, chairman and president of Gree Electric, said that Gree Electric attaches great importance to technological innovation.
It is emphasized that behind technological innovation is the rapid growth of patent applications. Wen Yuyu told reporters: "Up to now, Gree Electric has submitted more than 40,000 patent applications and authorized more than 23,000; Among them, the number of applications for invention patents is 6.5438+0.7 million, and 4,000 have been authorized. In 20 17, Gree Electric ranked seventh in the country in the number of invention patents granted, becoming the first enterprise in the home appliance industry to grant more than 1000 invention patents annually. "
In Wen Kuangyu's view, patent quality is the lifeline of enterprise innovation. As the carrier of innovation achievements, the quality of patents determines whether enterprises can give full play to their innovation advantages. Therefore, Gree Electric has taken many measures to improve patent quality in personnel training, platform construction and process system.
"In terms of personnel training, Gree Electric has established a four-level personnel training system from companies to individuals. Each person's annual study time reaches 300 hours, which can effectively improve the professional level of personnel and provide talent guarantee for improving the quality of patent application; In terms of platform construction, Gree Electric has built a systematic and standardized management platform, covering all the work modules involved in enterprise intellectual property management. At the same time, the technical solutions were classified, and the technologies developed by Gree Electric were divided into nearly 4,000 technical categories, and more than 7 million patent information was linked, which provided information support for Gree Electric's patent layout. " According to Wen Kuangyu, in terms of process system, Gree Electric has established a three-level audit system for patent application quality, focusing on monitoring the quality of patent application in three links: patent retrieval, patent application and OA reply.
By taking the above measures, the quality of patents in Gree Electric has been continuously improved. Wen Kuangyu introduced: "At present, the authorization rate of invention patent application in Gree Electric is over 80%, and the continuous improvement of patent quality has played an important role in the company's patent operation and patent rights protection. For example, a competitor suspected of infringing Gree Electric's patent filed six requests for invalidation of two patents in Gree Electric, but both were kept valid. In the subsequent patent infringement lawsuit, Gree Electric also won the case. In addition, there are 18 patents in Gree Electric that have won the China Patent Award, including 2 China design patents; * * * 30 patents won the Guangdong Patent Award, including 9 gold medals and 2 1 award for Excellence. "
Improving quality requires multiple channels.
As the lifeline of enterprise innovation, patent quality is usually reflected in the stage of patent confirmation and patent protection. Wen Kuangyu introduced that in the patent confirmation stage, the quality of a patent is mainly reflected in whether the protection scope of the claim is appropriate. The scope of protection is too small, which is easy to be evaded by competitors and cannot be effectively protected after the technology is made public; If the scope of protection is too large, the risk of patent application being rejected will increase, or the authorization period will become longer, and the technology will not be protected in time. In the stage of patent protection, patent quality is reflected in whether it can support enterprises to carry out patent management, mainly in whether the patented technology itself can produce better economic benefits and play an important role in patent litigation.
In practice, there are many factors that affect the quality of patents. "The height of patent technology, the applicant's understanding of existing technology and the writing level of patent application documents may all have a certain impact on patent quality." Wen Kuangyu introduced that in addition to the above factors, the level of patent agents also plays a very important role in the quality of patent applications.
In view of how to improve the quality of patent application in the process of patent agency, Wen Kuangyu suggested that enterprises reach an understanding with patent agencies and formulate a set of quality standards and process systems. For example, enterprises and patent agencies regularly hold seminars on the quality of patent applications, and through face-to-face quality exchange activities, discuss the writing ideas of specific cases, so that patent agents and patent technicians of enterprises can form * * * knowledge on the understanding of patent quality standards; Enterprises should formulate a strict qualification examination system for patent agents, regularly carry out rating evaluation of patent agents, and downgrade or even eliminate agents with quality problems.
In addition to the above measures, enterprises need to make efforts in three aspects: people, things and things if they want to improve the quality of patents. Wen Kuangyu suggested that, first of all, enterprises need to set up professional teams. Patent quality must be controlled by a full-time and professional team, which should be composed of high-quality talents in technology, law and management. Secondly, enterprises need to have standardized process management. Starting from the whole life cycle of a patent, every link should be managed by a standardized system. Only in this way can the stability of patent quality be guaranteed as much as possible. Third, enterprises need systematic platform management. Monitoring the process time limit with the help of information technology can realize information sharing and experience inheritance more efficiently, promote the continuous improvement of innovation level, and thus improve the patent quality from the source.