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沉睡专利 Sleeping Patents

在探讨研发的时候，一些重要的策略问题会反复出现。我们将通过本模块仔细研究这些问题。不少创新的诞生的确是源自好运气，但似乎毋庸置疑——大部分时候是因为创新者积极努力实现某个具体的发明。

This is a Chinese version of Competitive Strategy. You can find the original course in English from our course catalog. 此版本是Coursera首次尝试推出的中文翻译版。课程视频为英文原版附中文字幕，课程页面和测验已译成中文，帮助中心提供中文支持。在本课程（共六个模块）中，你将了解企业在战略决策相互依存的情况下如何行事。例如，你的行动会如何影响竞争对手的利润，反之亦然。我们将会借助博弈论的基本工具分析企业如何选择策略以获得竞争优势。

Destrezas que aprenderás

Game Theory, Strategic Thinking, Competition (Economics), Porter'S Five Forces Analysis, Strategic Management

Impartido por:

Tobias Kretschmer
Professor

Transcripción

So, welcome back for this very last video lecture for today.

And let's briefly talk about sleeping patents,

which are kind of an interesting phenomenon, because typically, you would

want to register a patent because you want to commercialize it.

Or do you? Let's have a look.

So, this generally phenomenon, that we can see that companies often apply for

relatively minor patents, which maybe economically sound, they have

no intention of ever commercializing, right?

So, minor patents, not particularly innovative.

Why would you want to commercialize them? Well then to take a step back, why would

you even register them? Well, the idea is a strategic one, and

the strategic one is simply that you would patent innovations that are close

to your main product. Because you want to prevent competitors

from inventing a close rival to your own product.

So, in other words, you want to maintain a monopoly position.

You want to make it difficult for others who want to produce something

that's fairly similar to your own product.

Put yourself into the shoes of some innovator.

That innovator has just come up with a new product.

That new product is protected by a patent.

But, of course, others, competitors, see that there are high profits to be made,

and so as a result, they want to get a piece of the pie.

So, they can't produce an exact carbon copy, because it's patent

protected. But they could try to invent around, they

could invent something that's fairly similar to the main product

and get parts of that profit. Now, with sleeping patents this is going

to be much more difficult. Because you're patenting stuff, that's

related to your product, which means it's much more difficult to produce something,

to invent something that's close to your main core product.

Here's an example. The example of Xerox a couple of decades

ago, was using sleeping patents to secure a monopoly position in the professional

copier market. So, this, of course, is a new version

but old copiers were also mainly used in offices, so professional copiers,

and Xerox was one of the trailblazers, one of the innovators in this industry.

Until some competitors or some would-be competitors started complaining.

And they said well, you know it's very difficult for us to develop that

technology. It's very difficult for us to actually do

something that's similar to what Xerox is doing because Xerox is just patenting

everything left, right, and center to their main product.

So, competition authorities then reacted and asked Xerox to license these sleeping

patents, i.e. to let other firms use these sleeping patents, to competitors.

So, competitors can now use the innovations that Xerox registered,

patented but never used. And the reasoning there by competition

authorities was that this practice of registering of sleeping patents was

hindering technological progress. And there was much more to be done with

copying machines. So, there was much more improvement to

be gained from copying machines. And Xerox by registering all these

sleeping patents was hindering that progress.

So, as we've just seen, with the example of Xerox,

sleeping patterns can have a strategic impact of monopolizing a position or

making a monopolizing position more stable.

So, firms might have an interest in undertaking R&D in a field that's related

to their current product. Even though, they're not really

interested in commercializing the output of that particular R&D project and so,

why? By patenting innovations that are close

to their own product, firms can, of course, pre-empt potential competitors from

developing similar products that might turn out as competitors to the own

product. So this way, the can successfully

decrease competition and secure profits from their current product.

So, let me summarize all that we've learned today in the following video.

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