Author: Zhou Yanpeng, Yang Mumen Time: 14.03.2018
Faced with a continuous stream of patent infringement lawsuits in the United States for a long time, Taiwan’s industry, academia, and research sectors often pay billions of dollars in damages, settlements, and legal fees, and even have their products banned from sale. They are struggling to find specific solutions to this headache, and have taken various concrete measures, such as applying for a large number of patents from various countries and giving them monetary rewards, purchasing patents that can counter sue and suppress lawsuits at high prices, obtaining authorization from a large third-party patent portfolio at high prices, being forced to join patent alliances of some American intellectual property companies, or so-called “technology cooperation” or “strategic alliances”, and so on.
The various actions taken by enterprises are nothing but attempts to liberate the market threat and operational freedom brought by patent infringement lawsuits in the United States through various combinations of intellectual property and business models. However, what is often overlooked by leaders and operators in Taiwan’s industry, academia, and research sectors in the field of smart property is that the creation, protection, management, operation, and marketing of “high-quality” and “advantageous” smart property involve an extremely important operational foundation that can determine the management and financial performance of smart property, namely the management of the operational process of smart property.
Smart property operation process is key
The operation of intellectual property and its various operations cover a wide range, mainly manifested in organizational operations and intellectual property. In terms of organizational operations, it includes organizational strategy, research and development, production and manufacturing, procurement and supply, market sales, logistics operations, information networks, human resources, finance, accounting, taxation, business models, government relations, media relations, investor relations, etc; In terms of intellectual property, it includes research, layout, application, maintenance, authorization, buying and selling, infringement litigation, valuation investment, financing guarantee, technical standards, patent alliances, industry alliances, research and development alliances, open innovation, as well as external professional service organizations (such as patent and trademark firms, law firms, consulting firms), governments of various countries (such as intellectual property bureaus, administrative agencies, judicial agencies) and their related operations and procedures involved in these intellectual property projects.
The current situation of the operation process of intellectual property is generally that process management in organizational operations has received attention, investment, and development from most enterprises. Its various processes are quite mature and have mostly formed standardized and systematic mechanisms. However, the R&D processes involved in academic research organizations tend to focus more on process management of government exchanges, while the actual R&D behavior and achievement transformation process have not received the attention they deserve for a long time.
In terms of process management of intellectual property, the industry university research community generally presents operational processes at the “legal” level. However, for the “operational” level processes, especially the global processes synchronized with organizational operations, intellectual property transformation, and value-added operations, as well as the unique operational processes of intellectual property, they have not yet been established and developed.
Cross border operational experience and practical foundation
The exploration and practice of the operation process of intellectual property have hardly been touched upon by the academic community at home and abroad, and only a few multinational enterprises have developed in the practical field, treating it as a “trade secret” that relies on competitive advantage and strictly managing it without disclosing or imparting it to the outside world. This also explains why most public and private sectors, as well as their research institutions and corporate organizations, find it difficult to break through the dilemma of poor performance in intellectual property operation, especially no matter how much resources are invested, applying for a large number of patents and trademarks in most countries, which cannot solve the long-term problems of technological and market autonomy. Moreover, they have always been in a “weak position” of “defendant” and “paying” compensation and royalties, and it is difficult to improve to use the patents they have obtained to become “plaintiffs” and “plaintiffs”. Collect compensation, And the ‘advantageous position’ of requesting authorization to pay royalties.
In other words, most technologically backward and market-oriented countries and their public and private sectors still have a superficial or narrow understanding and mastery of intellectual property, and are not yet able to enter the door to learn the key “secrets” of intellectual property operation processes, thereby gaining insight into its mysteries and benefiting from it. As a result, many industries are still deeply trapped in the colonies of others’ intellectual property, and can only do superficial projects to protect others’ intellectual property.
The establishment and development of truly useful and effective intellectual property operation process management first stems from the cross domain integration of organizational operations and intellectual property operations, which is difficult to shape from low-level and narrow single knowledge and operational experience; Secondly, it comes from long-term rich experience and practical foundation in cross-border operations, which means it is difficult to achieve quick results without practical and complex operational experience from books; Next, the operation process of intellectual property needs to run through internal and external organizations, different business functions, and require corresponding appropriate forms, control points, and audit points to support it, which is difficult to simply handle from legal projects and procedures; Finally, it is necessary to systematize and network the process to achieve standardization, organizational memory, and efficiency and effectiveness of the global process. This means that it is difficult to operate solely with manpower and a simple computer, and it is also difficult to adapt to the operation of the aforementioned intellectual property and the project scope required for each operation.
Therefore, in the current public and private sectors, as well as their research institutions and companies, their leaders and operators can rely on external cross disciplinary integration and experienced practical professional services to assist them in establishing and developing intelligent property operation processes and mechanisms that are in line with international competitiveness in the industry. It is not advisable to continue taking detours and waste time, money, and other resources. Because the operation process of intellectual property is like a human neural network, and if the neural network is blocked, no matter how much intellectual property is invested, it is just a skeleton.
Examples of Integration of Intellectual Property and Organizational Operations Processes
Firstly, taking the research and layout of intellectual property as an example, for a long time, research institutions and companies have relied on the traditional patent mapping taught by Japan for research and development. This involves conducting pre case searches based on technology efficacy matrices, patent classifications (UPC, IPC), and keywords to avoid patent infringement risks and patent layout applications.
However, over the past 40 years, it has been proven that Taiwanese companies have not avoided the risk of patent infringement. Instead, they are often sued, and the patents they apply for cannot be sued by competitors or companies in the industry chain. On the contrary, if the new patent map is based on the industrial chain, value chain, supply chain, product structure, and technological structure, while considering the R&D process, life cycle, R&D type, innovation type, and industry dynamic information (infringement litigation, authorized technology transfer, investment and acquisition, R&D alliance, industry alliance), according to the steps of the intellectual property research process (clarifying problems, defining scope, making good use of tools, objective presentation, professional analysis), various levels of product technology structure patent distribution information (patent owner, country, era, technical context, technical plan) can be generated. Then, based on organizational operation practice, various patent information reports can be judged and analyzed to produce technical plans, intellectual property plans, legal plans, and commercial plans, which can be used to avoid patent infringement risks and layout. High quality advantage patents, and then formulate strategies Steps and operation of various intellectual property business models to obtain diversified profits from tangible and intangible assets, rather than falling into the trap of traditional patent maps and continuing to “create problems, solve value, and meet expectations”.
Taking the handling of patent infringement lawsuits in the United States as an example, most companies rely on lawyers to direct the litigation. After a long period of suffering, huge financial expenses, and a lot of management manpower investment, they finally obtain unsatisfactory or reluctantly accepted results. On the contrary, based on the litigation process and its timeline in the United States, as well as the operational needs and processes of the organization, strategies, methods, and management resources are determined. Internal and external professionals are integrated to quickly define the scope, validity, infringement, and market and supply chain of the disputed patent, and to control the planning, research and development, manufacturing, marketing, sales, warehousing, logistics, information, network, human resources, accounting, intellectual property, and various stakeholders involved in the litigation. This enables the development of litigation and business strategies and tactics, and then directs litigation lawyers to carry out necessary legal work to conduct a low-cost, short-term, and cost-effective patent infringement litigation activity.
Finally, taking the research and development involved in the national science and technology budget as an example, empirical evidence from Europe and the United States shows that the intellectual property energy of research institutions (universities, corporate foundations) is the core source of development for many emerging industries. However, in Taiwan, except for some successful cases of intellectual property in the Industrial Technology Research Institute and a few universities, it is generally not as empirical as in Europe and the United States. One of the main keys is the research and development activities supported by the national budget and the intellectual property they produce. The process of formulating science and technology policies, allocating science and technology budgets, executing science and technology projects, transforming research and development results, and operating intellectual property should be connected and integrated at each stage, and various output indicators and performance requirements should be formulated based on the actual or future simulated industrial structure, technological structure, product structure, etc. Then, according to the various business and processes of intellectual property, various output indicators and performance requirements Requirement, It should be possible to change the long-term performance of the national science and technology budget, shifting from a long-term “negative” input-output ratio to a significant “positive” input-output ratio.
