Working together to deal with the “Siege” from the international giants
As the intangible asset for enterprises, the patent is particularly important for the exploitation of oversea market. Now, patent has become a kind of weapon behind the scene between enterprises among the various industries. Especially for the medium-and-small sized business oriented on the export, one or more key LED patent technology may decide the fate of the whole enterprise. The insiders predict that in the near two to three years, it is probably that the international giants may charge the local medium-and-small-sized business for patent infringement. Enterprises should enhance the self-protection awareness and deal with it in cooperation with each other. By setting up relative unions or organizations and do some investigations, collections, tracking and analysis towards world’s LED technology and patent, building up LED patent database to provide reference and application for the members of the union for new products research and development in time, searching and upgrading in time, establishing early warning mechanism, thus avoid infringe of the members in the union.
Some relevant insiders regard now as the most proper timing for setting up LED patent union. The oversea core patent is about to expire. According to the regulations of Patent Law, the protection period of invention patent is 20 years and the appearance patent is 10 years. The related LED patents applied in the early 1990s are now expired or about to expire which will bring tremendous development opportunity for domestic LED businesses. In addition, there is still considerable hidden danger as the severe patent barrier abroad. The domestic enterprises can work with each other by enhancing strategic research and enlarging the patent pool and integrating patents together to do cross licensing, eventually cope with the threaten from the international LED giants by cooperation.