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As an important part of intellectual property rights of enterprises, patents play a very important role in the development of enterprises. Effectively exploiting patents and implementing patent layout is an inevitable move for enterprises to avoid intellectual property risks and enhance the core competitiveness of the market.

In the environment of economic globalization, enterprises are facing more and more fierce competition, and many multinational companies attach great importance to the use of patent strategic layout to limit competitors and win market competitive advantages. Since the promulgation of the first patent law in 1984, China's patent application has been more than 30 years. In 2011, China's patent application has surpassed the United States and Japan to become the country with the largest number of patent applications in the world. However, while the number of patent applications has increased rapidly, the quality of China's patent is far less than that of the United States and Europe and other countries, and the status quo of large but not strong patents is still very prominent. If Chinese enterprises want to be invincible in the increasingly fierce market competitors, they must firmly grasp the patent this weapon. In addition to increasing research and development efforts, improving innovation capabilities, and increasing patent reserves, enterprises should pay more attention to the planning and layout of patent applications.

01

The significance of patent mining and patent layout

Patent mining refers to the enterprise or individual in the process of scientific research or production of technical achievements, from the technical and legal aspects of analysis, sorting out, split and screen out patentable innovation points.

Patent layout refers to the organic combination of patents by enterprises in various aspects such as production, market and law, to build a strict and efficient patent protection network, and to form a patent pattern favorable to enterprises. Patent layout is a further extension of patent mining, which is more professional and involves a wider range of areas.

A reasonable patent layout can improve the overall value of an enterprise's patent and enhance its market competitiveness. Specifically, a reasonable patent layout mainly has the following functions:

(1) It is conducive to correctly guiding the direction of R&D and improving the effectiveness of R&D;

(2) It is conducive to rational patent application and saving application costs;

(3) It is conducive to the construction of a reasonable patent protection network, weakening the advantages of competitors and improving market competitiveness.

02

How do companies mine patents

With the in-depth implementation of intellectual property strategy, most enterprises have a certain awareness of intellectual property creation and protection, hoping to protect their own products through patents and limit competitors, but many enterprises do not know how to mine patents, we introduce several patent mining methods.

2.1 Problem-oriented sound development of patent mining

In the process of production and operation, enterprises will have a variety of problems, such as defects in product quality, or poor user experience, which often directly affect the business development and market competitiveness of enterprises. Enterprises can collect, sort out and analyze these problems, find out whether the technical bottleneck has not broken through or the market direction is uncertain, and then take a brainstorming method to discuss on this basis, clarify the solution to the problem, determine the technological innovation and protection methods. Finally, by the enterprise management personnel, R&D personnel and patent agents comprehensive market, legal, technical and other factors, screen out the most valuable and suitable for the development of the enterprise's technical solutions to apply for patents.

2.2 Patent mining with competitor's technology as the orientation

As the saying goes, "know yourself and know your enemy, you won't be in a hundred battles". In terms of patent mining, we should pay more attention to the technical research direction of competitors, analyze the focus of patent mining and layout of competitors, and then adopt targeted patent mining strategies. When enterprises enter a certain market, they often carry out patent mining and layout in advance. By analyzing the patent information of major competitors, we can understand the market layout key points of technological development of competitors, and then sort out the innovation points combined with the advantages of enterprises, and then dig out the patents that can well protect their own product technology and limit competitors.

2.3 Project research-oriented patent mining

When enterprises carry out a certain technical research, it is often carried out in the form of project research. Guided by the project research, it is necessary to first clarify the technical difficulties to be broken through and all the functions achieved relative to the existing technology, and subdivide each technical point to achieve this purpose, and clarify the implementation path of the technical solution for each technical point. Secondly, the technical elements of each function are comprehensively analyzed to determine whether the technical elements meet the requirements of novelty, creativity and practicality of the patent application, and whether they meet the application scope of the patent.

03

How do enterprises carry out patent layout

The patent layout should be rationally planned according to the market patent situation, its own patent situation, the patent situation of competitors, laws and regulations and other relevant factors after comprehensive consideration. The patent layout commonly used by enterprises mainly has the following types.

3.1 Roadblock layout

It refers to the layout mode of applying for patents for one or several technical solutions necessary to achieve a certain technical goal, forming a roadblock patent. The advantage of the roadblock layout is that the application and maintenance costs are low, and the disadvantage is that competitors can bypass the roadblock by avoiding the design.

3.2 City wall layout

It means that all circumvention design schemes to achieve a certain technical goal are patented, forming a patent-like layout pattern. The wall layout can prevent competitors from invading their technological territory, and does not give competitors any space for circumvention design and alternative solutions.

3.3 Carpet layout

It refers to the layout mode of applying for patents for all technical solutions that achieve a certain technical goal or product, forming a blanket patent network. This model can effectively limit the entry of competitors, its disadvantage is that the cost is too high, time consuming.

3.4 Fence layout

It means that when the core patent is mastered by the competitor, many technical solutions around the technical topic will be patented, forming a fence patent layout pattern. This model is very suitable for "technology follower" enterprises that enter this field later.

The above several patent layout modes have their own advantages and disadvantages, and there is no simple good or bad. Enterprises need to combine their own technical fields and actual development, choose the most suitable for their own one or several hybrid modes for patent layout.

04

Enterprise patent mining and layout suggestions

In recent years, with the increasing awareness of intellectual property rights of enterprises, the patent mining layout has been known, applied and implemented by many enterprises, but there are not many enterprises that can fully explore the core technology and carry out effective layout through patents. Some enterprises think that applying for a certain number of patents around a certain technology is the patent layout. It did not fully consider factors such as technology, market and law, and failed to form core competitiveness by protecting products through intellectual property rights. According to the development status of Chinese enterprises and the author's research results, the following suggestions are put forward.

4.1 Enterprises should do a good job of patent information analysis before patent layout

According to the statistics of the World Intellectual Property Organization, 90% ~ 95% of the inventions and creations in the world are recorded in patent literature [4], and patent literature reflects the most cutting-edge scientific and technological innovation achievements to a certain extent with its extensiveness, openness, timeliness and professionalism. Therefore, the flexible use of various information in patent literature to track and analyze the cutting-edge technology of the industry involved, the patent status of major competitors at home and abroad, the market competition situation and the intellectual property risks faced are of great significance for enterprises to clarify the direction of technology research and development, formulate competitive strategies, and improve the efficiency of innovation research and development. Comprehensive, scientific and accurate analysis of patent information will become the decision-making basis for enterprises to carry out patent strategic layout planning, application strategy formulation and product value positioning, which determines the success or failure of the entire market competition of enterprises to a certain extent.

4.2 Enterprise patent layout should pay attention to time, region and timing

At present, the vast majority of countries in the world adopt the first application system, in order to avoid competitors first, enterprises have a good idea, feel valuable should immediately apply for a patent, rather than wait until the launch of the product to apply for a patent. The company's leading and not easily imitated technology can be applied for patents when competitors are about to catch up, on the one hand, it can extend the protection period, on the other hand, it can avoid premature disclosure of technology and give competitors the opportunity to take advantage of. For the geographical selection of patent applications, we generally adopt the principle of "market orientation", that is, priority is given to the region with the largest market or about to open up the market for patent layout, so as to maximize the value of our patents.

4.3 The technical focus of the enterprise patent layout should be determined for competitors

In the market competition, your competitors are not only the threats that compete with you, set obstacles for you, and seize your market, but also the "guides" of your technological innovation, product manufacturing, and market positioning. Enterprises should first ensure the correct direction of patent layout, and this direction in addition to their own research and development capabilities and market advantages, should also focus on competitors' technical research direction, patent layout focus. Because the focus of the patent layout of competitors is often the main position of their products and market development, keeping up with the patent layout of competitors can not only make us maintain the right direction of research and development and innovation, but also make it clear that enterprises need to lay out in advance in which technical areas and seize technical gaps.

4.4 Enterprises should strengthen cooperation with professional intellectual property service institutions

The patent layout is relatively professional, and the technical personnel of enterprises often only analyze the patent layout from the professional technical level, while ignoring the patent legal level, the macro protection level and the basic strategy of the patent layout. When enterprises carry out patent layout, they should let "professional people do professional things", strengthen communication and discussion with intellectual property service agencies, and combine the technical advantages of enterprises with the advantages of professional institutions in patent writing and layout strategies to achieve effective protection of core technologies.

In practice, many enterprises have good technology and applied for patents, but due to poor quality of patent writing and lack of layout strategy, they are successfully circumvented or even invalid by competitors. A professional service organization can not only protect the existing innovation points of the enterprise, but also propose new patent layout innovation points through the analysis of industry technology and competitors' patents, so as to maximize the efficacy of patent layout.

4.5 Enterprises should increase the training of professional talents and improve the awareness of patent layout

Enterprise intellectual property practitioners are not only to complete patent search, application document writing and daily management and maintenance, but more importantly, to carry out patent layout in combination with the enterprise's own advantages and protect core technologies.

On the one hand, starting from the source of enterprise innovation, excavating innovation points in technology research and development and production and operation, from major technological inventions to small process improvements, analyzing and classifying, clarifying protection methods and patent layout strategies, and improving employees' awareness of patent mining layout. On the other hand, it is necessary to establish a corresponding incentive evaluation system to reward inventions and creations to improve everyone's enthusiasm. At the same time, according to the characteristics of the enterprise to take hierarchical training, such as organizational management personnel awareness training, technical personnel professional practice training, to establish a professional patent layout talent team, for the enterprise's technological innovation, achievement protection and leapfrog development to lay a good foundation.

It refers to the layout mode of applying for patents for all technical solutions that achieve a certain technical goal or product, forming a blanket patent network. This model can effectively limit the entry of competitors, its disadvantage is that the cost is too high, time consuming.

The intellectual property strategy of an enterprise, including the full exploitation and perfect layout of patents, is directly related to the operation and development of an enterprise, and is an important part of the overall development strategy of an enterprise. With the rapid development of economic globalization and trade liberalization, Chinese enterprises will also face more severe patent competition.

Therefore, we must increase the core patent reserve, accelerate the construction of a comprehensive protection network for patent layout, so that patent layout becomes a powerful weapon for enterprises to participate in market competition, and promote the development of enterprises to a higher level.

Source: Chen Ziguo - Enterprise Technology Development Monthly

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