专利策略的核心维度(1) |《专利管理-保护知识产权和创新》摘录3

本书从实务的角度为专利管理提供有价值的管理见解，分析全球最重要的当前行业和新技术，由在管理和学术界具有杰出经验的知名作者撰写。本文摘录部分内容，以供学习。后附Google翻译，仅供参考。

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2.3  Core Dimensions of Patent Strategies

Most leading international technology companies pursue a patent strategy aimed at securing their own freedom of action, such as Siemens or IBM. A further aspect of this strategy is wanting to prevent the imitation of their own products and to thereby sustainably strengthen their competitive differentiation. Especially in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, the development of new active ingredients would not be affordable without effective patent protection. Some companies successfully defend their own products with patents, for example, Bayer versus Barr Laboratories, Ruby, and Hoechst-Marion-Roussel. Relatively few companies still focus their patent strategy on generating licensing revenues, such as is done by Philips.

A patent strategy aimed at the protection of innovations demonstrates the following core dimensions (Gassmann and Bader 2017; see Fig. 2.1):

· Goal 1: Ensuring Freedom-to-Operate (FTO)

· Goal 2: Differentiation by applying one’s own intellectual property

· Goal 3: Multiplier effect by generating licensing revenues

A comprehensive patent strategy already in itself provides for an initial situation in which the company can be attacked as little as possible by third parties. The less vulnerable a company is, the greater its freedom-to-operate vis-à-vis patents of third parties, and the stronger its own products can be defended, and have intellectual property rights enforced vis-à-vis competitors. Three types of activity can be distinguished: 

Fig. 2.1 The core dimensions of a patent strategy (authors’ own figure) 

· Prophylactic measures for prevention

· Defensive measures to defend one’s own competitive position

· Offensive measures for the self-initiated attack on competition

Goal 1: Ensuring Freedom-to-Operate

Here, the focus is on securing one’s own freedom-to-operate vis-à-vis third parties. As a rule, European companies attach great importance to this dimension and try to develop products and technologies that do not collide with the intellectual property rights of third parties. The own freedom of action can already be underpinned by the quantity of own patents and patent applications. On the one hand, competitors can be deterredand on the other, products can potentially get covered by potential attackers.

Freedom-to-operate (FTO) can thus be achieved through preventive, prophylactic measures in the development of one’s own products and technologies.

Defensive measures must be initiated if one company is attacked by another on the grounds of a patent infringement. Inpractice, the attacked company tries to use its own protective rights against products and business activities of the attacking company in addition to other measures.

Offensive measures that serve to obtain or maintain freedom of action can also be carried out on the company’s own initiative. This includes, in particular, proactive in-licensing or cross-licensing of interesting patents, but also the destruction of interferingpatents, for example, through opposition or nullity proceedings.

The Swiss elevator manufacturer Schindler strives to use the best possible technology for its products and services without infringing on them and also strives for the successful destruction of interfering third-party patents, for example, through opposition proceedings before the patent offices.

Develop Products Outside Reach of Third Parties

This objective should be pursued by companies in general. In practice, this means that the IP activities of third parties must be monitored and analyzed and, if necessary, specific circumvention solutions have to be developed.

This process, known as Product Clearing or Patent Clearing, is often associated with a high expenditure of time and money as well as acontinuous qualification of employees. A disregard or negligence can be punished in the USA in patent infringement proceedings by a tripling of damages (treble damages). In general, intellectual property rights are monitored with regard to the specifics and granularity of the relevant markets.

For example, the telecommunications equipment manufacturer Alcatel (now Alcatel-Lucent) monitored different sources of information: Publications and disclosures were used to prepare the technical information. Patents were mainly monitored for risk assessment with reference to the USA, Europe, and Germany. Patent searches were carried out by Alcatel using contract services, proprietary data profiles, and statistical evaluation methods. Typically, Derwent’s WPIDS, Inpadoc, EUROPatfull, and USPatfull were queried and the data further analyzed. Furthermore, the patent administration system Memotech of CPA was available. Further processing of the data, including statistical processing, was carried out using Excel and structured according to business areas, keywords, and other criteria. The results were released by the Senior IP Counsels and made available via the internal intranet site Quick-Place. Alcatel used a specially configured Lotus Notes database. Alcatel had by then found that the own preparation of the data was ultimately more costeffective than purchasing evaluations via information service providers. In addition, researchers and developers were able to conduct patent searches themselves via the intranet.

Defending Against Infringement Action

An earlier OECD study on Business Patenting and Licensing showed that 70% of the companies surveyed reported growing involvement in patent infringement proceedings. The following applies to those affected: “Attack is the best defense.” The basic strategy of defense against attacks by third parties is based on four pillars:

· Counter-attack on the legal validity of theaction patents, for example through nullity actions

· Counter-determination as to whether aninfringement of property rights exists at all, for example through negativedeclaratory relief

· Counter-attack on the product, technology,and service range of the aggressor with his own intellectual property rights

· Further procedural, legal, and possiblyeven political steps to influencethe infringement proceedings in one’s own sense

Nevertheless, the high costs that can generally arise in the enforcement of intellectual property rights should be taken into account: The costs of patent litigation in the USA amount to an average of 1.2 m US dollars—in most cases this is a zero-sum game (Cotropia et al. 2017). In the end, most litigation ends up with a settlement in order to prevent massive litigation costs. Furthermore, innovative SMEs have to consider in particular the consequential costs and resource commitment in a possible legal dispute; this applies in particular to the USA. In this respect, legal protection strategies must always be based notonly on legal but also on financialand political considerations.

Cultural aspects have also changed. While pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer Pharma or Sanofi were generally able to reach anout-of-court agreement with third parties in the past, there has now been an increase in court-supported disputes, not least due to the influence of American companies.

Design Access

Anyone wishing to avoid the latent risk of knowingly infringing third-party patents must proactively seek access to these rights or at least attempt to nullify them.

Licensing-In

In many cases, the complete development of work arounds is not possible, too costly, or undesirable for other reasons, reasons such as required adherence to technical standards. Then licensing or the acquisition of the IP right offer a solution for the exploitation of the rights.

Many companies, such as IBM, are already pursuing an open licensing strategy and offering licenses to third parties on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. However, as a rule, there is no general obligation for a company to license to third parties. Especially for large companies, the granting of licenses to third parties is often additionally tied to security being offered in return, for example, in the form of back-licenses. The in-licensing company is to be prevented from later being able to approach the licensing company for patent infringement. The licensing company could then only defend itself with great difficulty because the relevant patents have already been licensed and can no longer be used for a counter-attack.

Licensing at Google

The foundations of Google’s search technology were developed by the founders Page and Brin in 1998 during their studies at Stanford University (California). The patent rights have been held by the university ever since. However, Google was able to acquire the exclusive license rights until 2011.

In 2002, Google was sued in the USA by Yahoo! subsidiary Overture for patent infringement. The core patent (U.S. Patent US6,269,361) protects a process that affects an essential function for the advertising market—Google’s main source of income: the process allowsthe order of automatically generated search results to be subsequently changed and ads to be placed. The patent dispute was settled shortly before the IPO in 2004: Google received a license. In return, Google paid 2.7 million shares with an issue valueof around 100 US dollars and also paid license fees to Yahoo! subsidiary Overture for permission to use it.

One of the more controversial decisions is when the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Qualcomm for its unfair licensing practices. The US circuit court ruled that the company’s in famous “no license, no chips policy” was anti-competitive. The company had essentially forced companies, which needed its hardware in the form of specialized modem chips formobile networks, to license its technology. Qualcomm’s biggest profit center had been the patent licensing rather than the manufacturing. Judge Koh ruled that the royalty agreement, which was 5% of the value of the phone, had to be assessed off the price of the chips instead. Apple had been battling Qualcommin court over the same issue for years before (Wallstreet Journal 2019).

Cross-Licensing

If back-licenses are granted in return for the in-licensing of industrial property rights, a cross-licensing exists. In particular, companies with large market shares have the problem of high vulnerability in there spective market segments due to third-party patents. In addition, if there is a high level of competition and innovation in these segments with a high volume of intellectual property rights, many companies try to increase their degreesof freedom by gaining access to other intellectual property right portfolios, as Siemens and Microsoftdo, which two companies have concluded a patent license exchange. Whereas in the past there were often pure barter transactions of reciprocal rights of use, in recent years a balancing out of the mutual benefits has increasingly been compensated by monetary compensation.

The technology group OC Oerlikon has so far primarily used cross-licensing agreements to settle disputes. According to the head of the Emch legal department, however, in the future, these procedures will increasingly also be used for the economically viable procurement of intellectual property, for example, as a substitute for the pure acquisition of property rights, for company acquisitions or for the precautionary safeguarding of access to certain property rights.

Patent License Exchange Between SAP and Microsoft

During negotiations with Microsoft on a joint partnership to develop Internet services, SAP confirmed that it had already been approached in 2003 regarding a possible merger with Microsoft. The preliminary discussions stalled, but in 2004 both parties entered into a joint collaboration to develop Internet services. The agreement also included a patent license exchange agreement to improve the development framework of the two companies.

Opposition and Invalidation Actions

The opposition procedure gives the public not previously involved in the patent grant procedure the opportunity to have the patent re-examined by the patent office. The adversary is involved in the opposition procedure. If the opposition is successful, the patent is either restricted or revoked. The effect of the patent is accordingly retroactive. In the European and German proceedings, a period of 9 months is available for filing an opposition. In the USA, the 1-party procedure Ex Parte Reexamination and the 2-party procedure Inter Partes Reexamination for examination of the patent are available. After that, only the usually expensiveand costly nullity proceedings are available at the national level in manylegislations.1

With these legal instruments, the emergence of new protective rights can thus be restricted or even prevented at an early stage. In practice,the legal uncertainty existing until the conclusion of the proceedings is usually problematic. If the European procedure involves two instances, it will take about 4 years before the final decision is reached. In addition, the patent owner is made aware by the opponent that he is disturbed by the patent, otherwise the costs for the procedure would not be invested. The proportion of patents challenged by oppositions before the European Patent Office has been at a low level for years, 3.2 % in 2018 (2014: 4.7%) (EPO 2019). In many sectors, however, such as the consumer goods industry or the furniture supply industry, a real culture of objection is still lived. The consumer goods manufacturer Henkel alone lodges around 80 appeals a year in Europe.

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Google翻译，仅供参考：

2.3专利策略的核心维度

大多数领先的国际技术公司，例如西门子或IBM，都追求专利战略，旨在确保自己的行动自由。该策略的另一方面是希望防止模仿自己的产品，从而可持续地增强其竞争优势。尤其是在制药和化学工业中，如果没有有效的专利保护，开发新的活性成分将无法负担。一些公司通过专利成功捍卫了自己的产品，例如，Bayer vs Barr Laboratories，Ruby和Hoechst-Marion-Roussel。相对而言，很少有公司仍将其专利战略重点放在产生许可收入上，例如飞利浦。

旨在保护创新的专利策略展示了以下核心方面（Gassmann和Bader，2017年；见图2.1）：

·目标1：确保运营自由（FTO）

·目标2：通过运用自己的知识产权来实现差异化

·目标3：通过产生许可收入产生乘数效应

全面的专利战略本身已经为初始情况提供了条件，在这种情况下，公司可能受到第三方的攻击尽可能少。公司的脆弱性越小，相对于第三方专利的经营自由度就越大，可以保护自己的产品越强大，并且对竞争者拥有的知识产权就越强。可以区分三种活动： 

图2.1专利策略的核心维度（作者自己的形象） 

·预防措施

·捍卫自己的竞争地位的防御措施

·对比赛进行自我攻击的进攻措施

目标1：确保经营自由

在这里，重点是确保自己对第三方的操作自由。通常，欧洲公司非常重视这一方面，并尝试开发不与第三方知识产权冲突的产品和技术。自己的行动自由已经以自己的专利和专利申请的数量为基础。一方面，可以阻止竞争对手，另一方面，潜在的攻击者可能掩盖产品。

因此，在开发自己的产品和技术时，可以通过预防性的预防措施来实现运营自由（FTO）。

如果一家公司因专利侵权而受到另一家公司的攻击，则必须采取防御措施。实际上，除了其他措施之外，受攻击的公司还尝试对攻击公司的产品和商业活动使用自己的保护权。

为获得或维持行动自由而采取的进攻性措施也可以自行采取。这尤其包括主动对有趣的专利进行许可或交叉许可，还包括例如通过异议或无效程序销毁干扰专利。

瑞士电梯制造商迅达（Schindler）努力在不损害其产品和服务的范围内使用最好的技术，并且还努力例如通过专利局的异议程序来成功销毁干扰第三方的专利。

开发第三方以外的产品

一般而言，公司应该追求这一目标。实际上，这意味着必须监视和分析第三方的知识产权活动，并且在必要时必须开发特定的规避解决方案。

此过程称为产品清算或专利清算，通常与时间和金钱的大量消耗以及员工的持续资格相关联。在美国，无视或疏忽可在专利侵权诉讼中将损害赔偿金提高三倍（三倍赔偿）。通常，会根据相关市场的具体情况和范围对知识产权进行监控。

例如，电信设备制造商阿尔卡特（现为阿尔卡特朗讯）监控了各种信息源：使用出版物和公开内容来准备技术信息。主要参考美国，欧洲和德国对专利进行风险评估。阿尔卡特利用合同服务，专有数据资料和统计评估方法进行了专利检索。通常，查询Derwent的WPIDS，Inpadoc，EUROPatfull和USPatfull，并进一步分析数据。此外，可以使用CPA的专利管理系统Memotech。数据的进一步处理（包括统计处理）是使用Excel进行的，并根据业务领域，关键字和其他条件进行了结构化。结果由高级IP顾问发布，并通过内部Intranet网站Quick-Place提供。阿尔卡特使用了经过特殊配置的Lotus Notes数据库。到那时，阿尔卡特已经发现，自己准备数据最终比通过信息服务提供商购买评估更具成本效益。此外，研究人员和开发人员能够通过Intranet自己进行专利检索。

捍卫侵权行为

经合组织较早的一项关于商业专利和许可的研究表明，接受调查的公司中有70％报告说越来越多地参与专利侵权诉讼。以下内容适用于受影响的人：“攻击是最好的防御。” 防御第三方攻击的基本策略基于四个支柱：

·通过无效诉讼等方式反抗行动专利的法律效力

·关于是否确实存在侵犯知识产权的反裁定，例如通过负声明性救济

·以自己的知识产权对侵略者的产品，技术和服务范围进行反击

·采取进一步的程序，法律甚至可能的政治步骤来以个人的名义影响侵权诉讼

但是，应该考虑到在知识产权保护方面通常会产生的高额费用：美国的专利诉讼费用平均为120万美元-在大多数情况下，这是一个零和游戏（Cotropia et al.2017）。最后，大多数诉讼以和解结束，以防止大量诉讼费用。此外，在可能发生的法律纠纷中，创新型中小企业必须特别考虑相应的成本和资源投入；这尤其适用于美国。在这方面，法律保护战略不仅必须始终基于法律，而且还必须基于财务和政治考虑。

文化方面也发生了变化。虽然过去像拜耳制药（Bayer Pharma）或赛诺菲（Sanofi）这样的制药公司通常能够与第三方达成庭外协议，但现在法院支持的争端有所增加，这尤其是由于美国公司的影响。

设计访问

希望避免故意侵犯第三方专利的潜在风险的任何人，都必须积极寻求对这些权利的获取或至少试图使它们无效。

许可

在许多情况下，不可能全面开发解决方案，成本太高或由于其他原因（例如，必须遵守技术标准）而不受欢迎。然后，许可或知识产权的获取提供了一种利用权利的解决方案。

许多公司，例如IBM，已经在追求开放的许可策略，并以公平，合理和非歧视的条件向第三方提供许可。但是，通常，公司没有向第三方许可的一般义务。特别是对于大型公司，向第三方授予许可证通常还与以反向许可证形式提供的安全性相关联。防止授权公司以后能够向专利公司寻求专利侵权。然后，许可公司只能非常困难地为自己辩护，因为相关专利已经获得许可，不能再用于反击。

Google的许可

谷歌搜索技术的基础由创始人Page和Brin于1998年在斯坦福大学（加利福尼亚州）学习期间开发。从那以后，专利权就一直由大学持有。但是，直到2011年，Google都可以获取专有许可权。

2002年，Google在美国被Yahoo!起诉。子公司专利侵权提议。核心专利（美国专利US 6,269,361）保护了一个过程，该过程影响广告市场的基本功能-Google的主要收入来源：该过程允许随后自动更改搜索结果的顺序并放置广告。专利纠纷在2004年IPO之前不久就解决了：Google获得了许可。作为回报，Google支付了270万股股票，发行价约为100美元，还向Yahoo!支付了许可费用。子公司Overture有权使用它。

更具争议的决定之一是美国联邦贸易委员会（FTC）起诉高通公司不公平的许可做法。美国巡回法院裁定该公司的著名“无执照，无芯片政策”具有反竞争性。该公司实际上迫使那些需要其硬件（用于移动网络的专用调制解调器芯片形式）的公司许可其技术。高通公司最大的利润中心是专利许可而不是制造。Koh法官裁定，占手机价值5％的使用费协议必须从芯片价格上进行评估。多年以前，苹果一直在同一个问题上与高通法院竞争（《华尔街日报》 2019年）。

交叉许可

如果授予反向许可以换取工业产权的许可，则存在交叉许可。特别是，由于第三方专利，具有较大市场份额的公司在相应的细分市场中存在高度脆弱的问题。此外，如果这些领域的竞争和创新水平很高，并且拥有大量的知识产权，那么许多公司会尝试通过获取其他知识产权产品组合来提高自由度，例如西门子和微软，这两个公司公司已达成专利许可交换。过去，经常有纯粹的互惠使用权的易货交易，而近年来，互惠互利的平衡已越来越多地由金钱补偿来补偿。

迄今为止，技术组织OC Oerlikon一直主要使用交叉许可协议来解决争端。然而，据Emch法律部门负责人说，将来，这些程序还将越来越多地用于经济上可行的知识产权采购中，例如，代替纯粹的产权收购，公司收购或为了预防性维护某些财产权的使用。

SAP和Microsoft之间的专利交叉许可

在与微软就开发互联网服务的联合伙伴关系进行的谈判中，SAP确认在2003年已经就与微软合并的可能与SAP进行过联系。初步讨论陷入僵局，但是在2004年，双方共同合作开发了Internet服务。该协议还包括一项专利许可交换协议，以改善两家公司的发展框架。

异议和无效行动

异议程序使之前未参与专利授予程序的公众有机会由专利局重新审查专利。对手参与了反对程序。如果异议成功，则专利将受到限制或撤销。因此，该专利的效力具有追溯力。在欧洲和德国程序中，可以提出9个月的异议期限。在美国，有用于审查专利的一方程序“单方重新审查”和两方程序“单方重新审查”。此后，在许多立法中，只有通常昂贵且昂贵的无效程序在国家一级可用。1

通过这些法律文书，可以在早期阶段限制甚至阻止新保护权的出现。实际上，在诉讼结束之前存在的法律不确定性通常是有问题的。如果欧洲程序涉及两个案例，则大约需要4年时间才能做出最终决定。此外，对手会告知专利所有人他被专利打扰了，否则该程序的成本将不会投入。多年来，在欧洲专利局受到异议挑战的专利比例一直处于较低水平，2018年为3.2％（2014：4.7％）（EPO 2019）。但是，在许多领域，例如消费品行业或家具供应行业，仍然存在真正的异议文化。

（未完待续）

Source:https://www.springer.com/cn/book/9783030590086

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