What benefits do firms get from creating patent barriers, and can firms use patents to achieve industrial chain coverage?
In this article, we will analyze the role of patents from the perspective of how enterprises can monopolize the market by using the behaviors controlled by patents!
According to the provisions of the Patent Law: the patent can prohibit or license interested parties to implement three kinds of behavior, namely, for the purpose of production and management of manufacturing, sales and use, that is to say, for the unauthorized manufacture of patented products, sales and use of behavior, the patentee has the right to bring to the court to be prohibited, and meet the conditions of the patentee can be licensed to implement.
It is clear that the three behaviors of manufacturing, selling, and using constitute the complete commercialization value chain of an innovative product or method. When a company has a strong patent power, the control of an industry is quite strong, can be prohibited by law unauthorized manufacturing, sales and use of behavior, but also from the manufacturing process, sales and use of the link to obtain a patent license revenue, get a patent serves people, lose the patent serves people, this is not false.
In the entire mobile communications industry, Qualcomm has been at the top of the whole industry chain because of its 3G, 4G and 5G standard essential patents, and takes patent licensing as its important business model.
In the 3G era, Qualcomm can collect royalties from the entire communications industry, including communications equipment manufacturers (manufacturing), terminal manufacturers (sales) and telecommunications operators (use), all need to pay Qualcomm a relatively high royalty, known as the industry "Qualcomm tax", which part of the revenue has become the main source of Qualcomm's profits. This part of the revenue becomes the main source of Qualcomm's profits. In this way, regardless of whether these communication manufacturers earn money, must pay patent license fees to Qualcomm, in this case the manufacturers equivalent to Qualcomm working, Huawei, OPPO, VIVO, millet and so on are in this list.
From the relevant patent data show that Qualcomm holds the most is CDMA patent technology (2G), almost holding more than 90% of the patents, in the 3G network era, Qualcomm also owns a proportion of up to 27% of the patents. But in the 4G, 5G field, Qualcomm's patent share continued to decline, 4G field Qualcomm's patent share is only 16%, in the 5G field, Qualcomm's patent share is only 8%. It is foreseeable that with the patent strength continues to decline, Qualcomm can receive the patent license fee will gradually decline, will face more and more operating pressure.
Patents can control the manufacturing, sales and use of three key behaviors, so in the deployment of patents, on the one hand, the need to cover the entire industrial chain of each value chain, so that the gun to hit a line; on the other hand, in each link to aim at the main stakeholders, that is, the stick to sweep a large area, can not allow the target stakeholders to escape from the side of their own patents, so as to achieve the influence of the whole industry and control.
Just like a hunter setting up a trap for a wild animal, the layout of patent protection and allocation of patent assets is also a thorough and systematic design and deployment process for a specific range of stakeholders, which is crucial to the realization of business objectives and should not be ignored.
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