Author: Selected from IAM Date: 01.04.2019
Y.P. Jou served as the general advisor of Foxconn for as long as 18 years. Leveraging the extensive experience accumulated in the process of founding multiple intellectual property service providers, he not only deeply participated in the strategic formulation of this Taiwanese company but also successfully developed his personal career in fields such as data. Although he is at the helm of MiiCs & Partners, a monetization consulting firm, and Wispro, a law firm, his recent focus has been on two other entities. The first is ScienBiziP, especially its Japanese subsidiary (which was originally an intellectual property department of Sharp and later became an independent company). Sharp’s patent portfolio has continuously driven patent transactions, such as the patent transfer deals reached with OPPO and NPE Longhorn IP in 2018. The second is his own intellectual property data company, InQuartik. This year, the company announced a strategic partnership with Erich Spangenberg’s blockchain startup IPwe. Currently, the application of distributed ledger technology in intellectual property is still in the theoretical stage, but if two heavyweights like Jou and Spangenberg announce a cooperation, the market will definitely wait and see.
Y. Interview with P Jou
Y. P Jou is a former intellectual property manager at Foxconn, currently responsible for four different service providers, some of which only provide services to his former employer, while others target the general market. After leaving Foxconn, you held leadership positions in Wispro, MiiCs, ScienBiziP, and inQuartik. What are the benefits of working in so many different entities? How do you make time to manage these companies?
Y. P: We provide intellectual property or legal services to different clients and industries in different countries/regions. Wispro was founded by Aileen Chang, and I am an investor. Wispro’s headquarters in Taiwan mainly provides legal and intellectual property services to newly established technology companies and multinational corporations, but does not provide services to Foxconn. ScienBiziP is a joint venture between Foxconn and me, mainly providing intellectual property application and consulting services. It only serves Foxconn and does not serve second parties in Taiwan. In China, the United States, and Japan, there are no such restrictions MiiCs focuses on global intellectual property and acts as a technology trading agent. InQuartik is an independent data service provider that I personally invested in and founded, mainly developing artificial intelligence (AI) to extract patent data. Although I have been involved in the work of Wispro, ScienBiziP, and MiiCs at different times, these three companies are currently managed by their own teams, and I am only providing guidance. Now, I mainly manage InQartik and ScienBiziP Japan subsidiaries. Therefore, I have plenty of time.
As Foxconn Group’s business gradually expands from contract manufacturing to industrial artificial intelligence systems and other fields, what changes have taken place in the group’s overall intellectual property strategy?
Y. P: In recent years, Foxconn’s business in hardware, artificial intelligence, and even platform services has undergone significant changes. Therefore, it has given up many patents and focused on the intellectual property deployment of 5G, 8K technology and key components. More importantly, it is increasingly emphasizing the quality and value of patents rather than the quantity of patents.
Last year, you reached several patent deals with Sharp. How do you view patent trading and licensing markets?
Y. P: The patent trading (buying and selling) and licensing markets are gradually maturing. Buyers and licensees will use human data tools to analyze the quality of each patent and the relationships between patent families. In this way, patent holders are unable to bundle a large number of low volume and worthless patents. In other words, patent big data and artificial intelligence will make previously asymmetric information and opaque transactions more fair and transparent.
InQuartik is the intellectual property analysis company you founded. How do you make your product stand out in a fiercely competitive market? What is the next step in your analysis product roadmap?
Y. P: The advantages of InQuartik Patentcloud lie in data quality (especially deep data on US patents and multiple countries/regions) and one click exclusive features. Users can immediately obtain important information about each US patent and its patent family, so that they can immediately understand their strengths and weaknesses. The InQuartik Patentcloud roadmap currently includes other products such as patent search, quality insight and design search, and value insight. I hope Patenlcloud can create a patent lifecycle management model using big data. While ensuring that most patents have both quality and value, it can reduce the number of patents and make the market healthier.
You recently announced that lnQuartik has formed an alliance with IPWE, a blockchain service company founded by Erich Spangenberg. How do you view the impact of blockchain on the knowledge-based services industry?
Y. P: Blockchain has significant significance and value for patent applications, transactions, and asset management. However, its success will depend on data quality, practical algorithms, and new business models.
