What Is a Process Layout?

Patent layout refers to the comprehensive combination of industrial, market, and legal factors of an enterprise, and organically integrates patents, covering the dimensions of time, region, technology, and products related to the interests of the enterprise, building a strict and efficient patent protection network, and finally forming a favorable pattern for the enterprise. Patent portfolio.

Patent layout

(Glossary)

Right!

Patent layout refers to the comprehensive combination of industrial, market, and legal factors, and organically integrates patents, covering the dimensions of time, geography, technology, and products related to the interests of the enterprise, building a strict and efficient patent protection network, and finally forming a favorable pattern for the enterprise Patent portfolio.

As a result of the patent layout, an enterprise's patent portfolio should have a certain number of scales, with clear protection levels and complete functions, so as to obtain a patent competitive advantage in a specific field.

The patent layout of an enterprise usually involves four main departments or internal entities: the intellectual property management department, the company management, the marketing department, and the research and development department (technical department). Among them, the intellectual property management department plays a very important role in the entire patent layout process. Important leading and driving role.

Roadblock layout

Barricade layout refers to the application of a patent for one or more technical solutions necessary to achieve a technical goal, forming a layout model of a barricade patent.

The advantage of the barricade layout is that the application and maintenance costs are low, but the disadvantage is that it leaves a certain space for competitors to bypass the obstacles set by their own. The competitors have the opportunity to break through the obstacles by avoiding the design, and inspired by their own patents. R & D costs are lower for competitors. Therefore, this mode is only appropriate when the technical solution is necessary to achieve the goal of a certain technical topic, and it is difficult for competitors to bypass it and avoid the design must invest a lot of human and financial resources.

Enterprises adopting this model for layout must have a comprehensive and accurate grasp of the innovation status of a particular technology field, and especially have a better understanding and understanding of the innovation capabilities of competitors. This model is more suitable for technology-leading companies to adopt in blocking application strategies.

For example, Qualcomm has laid out a basic patent for CDMA, so that no matter it is WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, or CDMA2000's 3G communication standard, it cannot bypass its roadblock patent. For another example, Apple's patented layout for mobile phone and computer touch technology also set a big obstacle for competitors to avoid their designs.

2.City wall layout

City wall layout refers to the application of patents for all circumvention design schemes that achieve a certain technical goal, forming a layout pattern of a series of city wall patents.

The city wall layout can prevent competitors from invading their own technological territory, and does not give competitors any space to evade design and find alternatives.

When there are many different technical solutions around a certain technical topic, each of which can achieve similar functions and effects, you can use this layout pattern to form a fence to prevent competitors from having any gaps that can be used to avoid.

For example, if method A can be used to manufacture a certain product, methods B and C of manufacturing the same product must be considered. A specific example is that if an active substance is extracted from a microbial fermentation broth, it is necessary to consider chemical synthesis, The active substance is obtained from natural sources and semi-synthetic or structural modification methods, and then the methods of these several methods are applied for patents one by one, which is the city wall layout.

3. Carpet layout

Carpet-style layout refers to the layout pattern that all technical solutions that achieve a certain technical goal are patented, forming a carpet-type patent network.

This is a layout pattern that would rather be a thousand misplaced than a missed one. With this layout, through sufficient patent mining, a large number of patents can often be obtained, and a solid patent network can be formed around a certain technical subject. Therefore, it can effectively protect its own technology and prevent competitors from entering. Once a competitor enters, they can also be kicked out of their protected area through patent litigation and other methods. However, the disadvantages of this layout model are that it requires a large amount of funds and the cooperation of research and development personnel, high input costs, and it is easy to evolve into patents and patents in the absence of a systematic layout strategy. It is prone to situations where patents overflow but fail to exert the expected effect.

This patent layout model is more suitable for companies with strong R & D capabilities in a certain technology field. R & D results have been produced in various research and development directions, and companies that expect to quickly compete with technology-leading companies use it in patent network strategies. It is used in the electronics or semiconductor industries with a large number of patents, but it is not very suitable for the pharmaceutical, biological or chemical industries.

For example, IBM's patent layout model is a typical representative of carpet-type layouts. IBM ranks among the top in the number and quality of patent applications in any ICT technology category. It can obtain substantial license transfer benefits by relying on a large number of patents each year, without the need to make a fortune , Xingshi moved. IBM is called "the artist who creates value."

4. Jungle-style patent layout

The patented jungle-style layout also calls this kind of layout as sugar-coated, just like sugar-coated with the basic patent, just like the jungle around the big tree that surrounds the basic patent, and can't get in or out. This layout can be divided into two situations: First, the basic patent is in the hands of competitors, then a large number of peripheral patents can be applied for the patented technology, and multiple peripheral patents surround the competitors' basic patents, just like large The bushes around the tree are the same. In this way, the basic patents of competitors can be effectively prevented from expanding around, thereby greatly weakening the value of the basic patents of competitors. When necessary, cross-licensing with competitors' patents can also be used in exchange for granting the opponent's basic patent. Second, when basic patents are in our hands, we must not forget to arrange jungle patents in advance around our own basic patents, strictly protect our own basic patents, and not give our competitors the opportunity to implement such a patent layout.

The layout of patents does not have very fixed formats and rules. The basic principle is to make a reasonable plan based on the comprehensive consideration of the patent status of the entire market, its own patent status including financial resources, manpower, and related factors. The aforementioned various patent layouts do not include all types, and it is impossible to achieve this. At the same time, various basic patent layouts can be combined or deformed in various ways to form a patent protection net. High-quality patent protection nets should be tight, layered, and cost-effective. The so-called rigorousness is the imperviousness of the air, which does not give the opponent an opportunity. This does not mean that the more patents, the more rigorous it is, the more important is the grasp of quality, and the research and judgment of the direction of technology development. Otherwise, there may be a large number of patents, but most of them belong to the category of junk patents. Like a group of casual soldiers, they will not be protected or curbed when they are touched; the so-called sense of layering means the strategic depth to form a multi-layered The protective net is rich in depth and is three-dimensional instead of flat. It needs to effectively combine various patent layout strategies. The superior performance-price ratio can actually reflect wisdom, which is to maximize the benefits with the same cost and input and output. This is undoubtedly a test of human wisdom. An excellent protection net should have two functions, one is to protect its patent or non-patent technology from infringement, and the other is to be able to attack competitors. The better this network is, the greater its role will be.

Phenomenon 1: Foxconn has applied for more than 8,000 patents on connectors of $ 2. The connector produced by Foxconn is a very small component, of course, it is also a core component. The price is not high but the profit is high. It is this small connector, but Foxconn has invested a lot of manpower and financial resources, carried out in-depth research and development and mining, and made a lot of fruitful patent applications. It has successively obtained more than 8,000 patents, forming an airtight field in this technology. With such a patent layout, it is simply impossible for competitors to infiltrate or enter or avoid. The enlightenment of this case is: for the core technology of the enterprise, its protection should be ardent.

Phenomenon 2: A company has established a complete patent layout network and formed a stable patent pool. Therefore, although several patents were invalidated by opponents, although individual patents may be judged invalid, the overall patent protection network It does not pose harm or threat, so it effectively resists the attack of the opponent and guarantees the company's normal business operations and product production.

Phenomenon 3: A company in the United States applied for a patent for graphical user interface technology in 1979, which is an example of using patent applications as a technology reserve. The company's technology later formed the basis of the Apple Macintosh and Apple Windows personal computer operating systems, which is the significance of the strategic layout of patents. Layout in advance with a forward-looking vision often receives unexpectedly large profits.

Phenomenon 4: At the Hanover Fair in Germany in 2008, a large number of Chinese electronics manufacturers were involved in civil lawsuits or even faced criminal lawsuits due to alleged infringement. This is largely because Chinese manufacturers do not pay attention to the patent layout, and at the same time, the patent layout of competitors Knowing nothing, blindly entering a certain market.