Valuing patents and licenses from a business strategy perspective – Extending valuation considerations using the case of nanotechnology

Currently there is a debate in the field of nanotechnology about the evolving IP landscape and its impact on innovative progress based on technological discovery in the future. Nevertheless, nanotechnology patents will serve as an important securitization instrument for future financing and business strategic purposes. Valuation know-how of nanotechnology patents will therefore become critical in deal-making and in bringing about innovation. Like many innovative products today, nanotechnology enabled products also consist of a multitude of patented technological components from different stages in a value chain and belonging to a multitude of owners. Complex IP landscapes along entire value chains give rise to a tendency to over-value one’s own patented technology from an ex-ante and individual company’s perspective. Thus the sum of individually estimated values of patented technology can exceed the value that can be realized ex-post in a given value chain. We extend current valuation considerations of patented technology from a static perspective to include a dynamic view using nanotechnology as an example. Furthermore, in addition to single value chain stages as a level of analysis (level A) we also take into account the complex technology landscapes in entire value chains (level B) as well as patented technologies’ potential value in different current or future value chains (level C). We derive conclusions with respect to valuation approaches for the discussed levels of analysis from a static and dynamic perspective.     

Foreign applications at the Japan Patent Office - An empirical analysis of selected growth factors

This article aims to evaluate some of the possible factors which could have had a significant role in the increase in the yearly number of foreign patent applications at the Japan Patent Office. The analysed period ranges from 1991 to 2005. In the years considered, foreign applications increased constantly while the number of domestic filings remained almost the same or even decreased. The increase is more striking when compared to analogous figures of the US Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office, where the corresponding ratio did not change too much in the same period. Building on previous literature, this paper analyses the impact of some macroeconomic and structural characteristics of the extending countries, on one side, and, on the other side, some features specific to the receiving country and its Patent Office (here Japan and the JPO). This work tries to capture the relevance of such drivers in the increased amount of foreign patent applications at the JPO.     

Electric vehicle technology in China: An exploratory patent analysis

Currently, the electric vehicle (EV) technology is of great interest in China and around the world. This paper first conducts a comprehensive review of China's EV policies and the development of China's EV technology, and then analyzes the domestic performances of China's EV technology and its international competitiveness by adopting the recently developed concept of transnational patents. The results show an outstanding performance for China's EV technology in the domestic market, but a relatively poor performance in the international markets. Finally, several main factors causing the inconsistent performance of China's EV technology are proposed and discussed.     

Patent analyses in the changed legal regime of the US Patent Law since 2001

In 2001, a new ruling for the publication of patent applications at the United States Patent and Trademark Office came into effect. Since then, all applications which are also filed with foreign offices have to be published 18 months after the application date, in analogy to the ruling in Europe and Japan. This new regime replaces the former system where only granted patents were published. With about 70% of all applications the share of pre-grant publications of applications of US origin is quite high, allowing new types of statistical analysis. In particular, the investigations of time series based on priority years instead of grant years can thus be performed much more topically. On the one hand, a larger dataset for applications of US origin is available; on the other hand, the sample of applications from Asian countries is generally much larger at the US Patent Office than at the European Patent Office. Despite these new opportunities, searches at low levels of aggregation by codes of the International Patent Classification still have to be handled with care.     

Patenting activities by developing countries: The case of Malaysia

This study examines the patenting activities in Malaysia with regards to applied for and granted patents in the Malaysian and US patent systems. The evidence shows that the patenting trend is increasing, particularly due to foreign firms’ participation in the Malaysian economy. As such, any shock to the economic activities of foreign firms will deter patenting trends. This also indicates that the current local indigenous innovative capabilities are still weak and require better policy intervention to accelerate the inventive capabilities of Malaysia.     

基准等效听阈声压级全国量值比对及数据不确定度分析

基准等效听阈声压级是评定人耳听阈的重要参数。本文简要介绍基准等效听阈声压级量值比对过程、比对测量数据及其不确定度分析。     

“80% of technical information found only in patents” – Is there proof of this ?

“80% of technical information is published only in patents”. This sentence is well known among information and patent professionals. Within this publication the commonly considered source of this statement is cited and examples of different published patent statistics are given, illustrating previous approaches of quantifying information.Prospects for the importance of patent literature are provided considering the rising number of patent publications over the last decades.The conclusion of this verification is that the 80%-phrase cannot be used without making some limitations, nevertheless this will continue existing for a long period of time.     

Trademarks and the patent premium value: Evidence from medical and cosmetic products

The determinants of the premium value of patents for medical and cosmetic products are analyzed with respect to a complementary IP strategy such as trademarks. I discuss a novel method and database to gauge combinations of patent and trademark pairs regarding the same innovative project. The premium value is computed through a model of renewal decisions for the patent cohorts 1985–1990 that have been designated in the U.K. and Germany. After taking into the account several firm characteristics and patent indicators typically used in the literature, I find ample evidences that patent and trademark pairs are featured by higher valuations.     

基于全球专利的硅衬底镓氮器件发展趋势研究

基于德温特DII专利数据库,利用Thomson Data Analyzer等工具从全球专利发展态势、技术发展趋势、专利权人专利布局、功能和应用领域分布等方面进行了分析总结。结果显示,硅衬底镓氮器件从2011年以来快速发展,日本在硅衬底镓氮器件的研究方面具有较大竞争优势,我国还是停留在研究阶段,相关的专利技术缺乏核心竞争力。目前研究热点集中在二极管和晶体管,微波器件、放大器、射频器件等是目前的研发空白点,相关技术有待突破。     

"Get Rich, or Die Trying": Lessons from Rambus' High-Risk Predatory Litigation in the Semiconductor Industry

Patent litigation is a visible and widespread feature of the semiconductor industry, as firms pursue judicial mechanisms to defend, or promote, their intellectual property portfolios. This study highlights the antecedents, strategic goals, tactics and outcomes of the most significant US trial of this type in the last decade, namely Rambus v. Infineon, whereby a smaller company (Rambus) successfully pursued a “do or die” litigation campaign against a larger rival, thus changing the rules of engagement for the semiconductor industry as a whole. This campaign is notable, not just because of its undoubted effects on the semiconductor industry, but because of the innovative nature of Rambus' strategy, which was extremely risky both in terms of its prospects of success and its potential damage to the company if it failed. Arguing that dominant logic and operating rules are important antecedents in the development and pursuit of patent litigation strategies, this paper analyses the Rambus case using a “dominant logic” and “effectuation” framework. Doing so demonstrates the innovative nature of Rambus' “high-risk predatory strategy”, the outcome of a dominant logic sustained by effectuation principles. The paper discusses the impact and significance of this new strategic form.     

Patent specifications no. 2002

Presented here are the results of some ‘topical’ research for the year 2002––a selection of the patent specifications numbered 2002. It provides a snapshot of the technologies, the inventors and the illustrations of their inventions, from around the world and spanning more than 200 years, from 1794 to 2002. The value of both traditional, paper-based collections and current Internet-based resources in this context is underlined. Over 60 specifications, from some 30 countries and organizations are covered including US, GB, DE, RU, CH, PL, GR, OA, EP, WO, BR, JP, CN, SK and LT.     

Value chain management for commodities: a case study from the chemical industry

We present a planning model for chemical commodities related to an industry case. Commodities are standard chemicals characterized by sales and supply volatility in volume and value. Increasing and volatile prices of crude oil-dependent raw materials require coordination of sales and supply decisions by volume and value throughout the value chain to ensure profitability. Contract and spot demand differentiation with volatile and uncertain spot prices, spot sales quantity flexibility, spot sales price–quantity functions and variable raw material consumption rates in production are problem specifics to be considered. Existing chemical industry planning models are limited to production and distribution decisions to minimize costs or makespan. Demand-oriented models focus on uncertainty in demand quantities not in prices. We develop an integrated model to optimize profit by coordinating sales quantity, price and supply decisions throughout the value chain. A two-phase optimization approach supports robust planning ensuring minimum profitability even in case of worst-case spot sales price scenarios. Model evaluations with industry case data demonstrate the impact of elasticities, variable raw material consumption rates and price uncertainties on planned profit and volumes.     

TREC chemical information retrieval - An initial evaluation effort for chemical IR systems

There is little need to emphasize the importance of chemoinformatics and chemical information retrieval. However, what seems to require a lot more effort in convincing members of the community is the need for standardized evaluation procedures and measures. How confident are we, as users, that the search tools we used have given us all the information that we were looking for? It is unrealistic to believe a marketing campaign which claims that a specific patent IR (information retrieval) system can find all relevant results for a search topic. And if we don’t trust marketing campaigns, how can we get an idea of what to expect from a patent search engine?One of the most prominent initiatives to work in this direction, of evaluating chemical IR tools, has started in 2009 with the support of NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology): the TREC Chemical IR Track focuses on evaluation of search technologies for retrieval and knowledge discovery of digitally stored information on chemical patents and academic journal articles on chemistry. This paper describes our 2009 experience, presents the official results of the participating groups, and lays down the targets for 2010.     

轻质石油产品硫含量测试方法研究与评价

随着汽车尾气排放标准越来越严格,要求汽车燃料汽、柴油中的硫含量越来越低。作为硫含量测定的仲裁试验方法,石油产品硫含量测定法-燃灯法由于检出限达不到要求,将不再适用。通过对微库仑法和电感耦合等离子体发射光谱法(ICP-AES)法测试硫含量进行研究,得出结论:微库仑法和ICP-AES法均适用于测试轻质石油产品中的微量硫含量,两种方法测试结果一致性很好;ICP-AES法测试精密度相对较高,检出限低。     

基于离散元方法的沥青混合料力链演化及分布量化分析

为了研究沥青混合料内部颗粒间力链的演化及分布规律,以AC-13沥青混合料作为研究对象,利用离散元方法重构沥青混合料数字试件,模拟简单性能试验,提取试件内部颗粒间的力链信息进行力链演化、概率分布和角度分布分析。结果表明,通过比较预测结果和实测结果,基于离散元方法重构的AC-13沥青混合料细观模型用于模拟其细观力学特性是可行的。试件内部力链空间分布具有各向异性,以垂直方向的压力力链为主,承受大部分的半正弦荷载。法向力链概率分布随加载时间的变化规律基本一致,法向接触力与平均法向接触力比值f最小时,概率分布出现最大值,f=1.75时,概率分布再次达到峰值,然后逐渐减小并趋于稳定。法向力链角度分布主要位于90°和270°附近,第一、二象限的角度分布比例远大于第三、四象限,60~120°、30~150°中法向力链角度分布比例均大于70%,最小为72.733%。     

Heuristic for the assort-packing and distribution problem in the fashion apparel industry

We model and derive an algorithm for the assort-packing and distribution problem (APDP) in the fashion apparel industry. Assort-packing is a common method used to reduce the distribution lead time between manufacturers and retailers, wherein different items are packed together in one box according to the retailers’ demands. Specifically, in the fashion industry, multiple box types are configured by varying the size distribution of the same apparel product. In this study, we propose an optimisation model to quantitatively solve the APDP with respect to how many box types should be configured, how to configure the size distribution in each box, and how many of each type of box should be sent to stores. In particular, the modelling and algorithm development focus on the size-assorted homogeneous-article configuration in the APDP, a widely used assort-packing method in the fashion industry. We show that the APDP is NP-hard, and propose a heuristic algorithm in which a pre-processing step significantly reduces the search space. Numerical studies of the industry scale are conducted and show that the algorithm outperforms the benchmarking algorithms.     

Duty of disclosure during patent prosecution in India

The Indian Patent Office has witnessed an increase in both volume and earnestness from applicants as a result of a duty to disclose that is mandated under Section 8, The Patents Act, 1970. There is a need to delink this with its original purpose. The present study aims at tracing the contours of the duty to disclose requirement in India and in the light of the recent cases, examine the extent to which Section 8 accomplishes the purpose. Elaboration of guidelines for Section 8 in the Manual for Patent Practice and Procedure and need for online linking of databases are suggested as measures for improvement.     

我国林业生物质成型燃料产业化实证研究

分析了发达国家林业生物质成型燃料产业发展的经验,指出国内目前阶段该产业的发展依赖于完整的产业链构建。我国可能源化利用的林业生物质资源丰富,具有充分的比较优势。分析我国供热市场现状和问题后指出,林业生物质成型燃料的市场应该锁定在分布式供热上,并提出促进该产业发展的具体建议。