Price competition, product competition giving way to core technology competition
The patent war in the household electricity industry has become normal
After price wars, technology wars, marketing wars, this year's household electricity industry pushed the patent war to “top”. Industry believes that, after decades of development, the tentacles of the electricity industry in china and china have spread to all corners of the world, and intellectual property rights, including patents, have become a “discreet”。
There's been a patent war on domestic electricity
In recent days, the hyshin group listed company, qingdao sea news and electrical co., inc. (hereinafter referred to as haitung), brought concurrent proceedings in beijing and qingdao courts against sharp trading (china) ltd., nanjing sharp electronics ltd., shenzhen science and technology (hereinafter referred to as shenzhen) ltd. (hereinafter referred to as shenzhen) for violating their invention patent rights in china. On this basis, haicom requested the court to order sharp to cease the violation immediately and to compensate $10 million。
It is understood that the actions initiated by the haicom concerned “a backlight control method, devices and led television” and two patents on “backlight drive circuits and televisions”. At present, the beijing intellectual property court has heard the case of haicom electric v. Sharp for violation of patent rights to inventions。
In response, sharp responded that it would respond positively and that it had filed a request for annulment of the patent in the case of sea-based electronics。
In june of this year, sharp filed an action in the california state court of the united states of america for the sale of low-quality lcd televisions to tarnish their brand image, requesting that the hysin group cease to use the “sharp” trademark and pay at least $100 million in compensation; soon after, sharp sued the hysin group for violating its patent rights, demanding a ban on the sale of the products in question, and also requesting the united states international trade commission (itc) to investigate the haisin group。
The dispute between haysing and sharps originated in 2015, when sharps were in a difficult position when haisin, at a cost of $23. 7 million, acquired ownership of the sharps mexico factory and obtained branding rights in the americas, except brazil。
In 2016, the honghai group acquired 66 per cent of sharp's shares. In order to take back the ownership of sharp's brand, the honghai group negotiated with the hyshin group. Following a refusal by the chinese side, fuscon, under the umbrella of the hong kong sea group, attempted to withdraw sharp's branding authority in north america by litigation and even by launching 337 investigations against the united states government。
It is clear that, after price wars, technology wars, marketing wars, this year's household electricity industry pushed the patent war to the “top”. For example, this “complaint” between gwig and u. S. Brought the number of cross-claims around patents to 12, with cumulative claims amounting to hundreds of millions of yuan. This summer, the competition for patents between these two giants once became the focus of industry attention: in june this year, the united states initiated four successive lawsuits against guangzhou, suzhou and others against guangzhou, with a cumulative claim of over $50 million, after gwits sued u. S. Air conditioners for violating their new and functional patents and claimed $50 million。
On the same day as the suit against america, gwig also filed a “war paper” with ox, another air conditioner company, claiming that over 30 of his products had tortuous gwig patents entitled “up and down, integration of the shell”, requesting the court to confirm that ox had violated and to award $110 million in damages。
Intellectual property rights become “untraffic”
Indeed, with increased competition, “patent wars” seem to have become the norm in domestic electricity in recent years。
In response, the associate professor of the shenzhen institute of the university of tsinghua stated that patent infringement suits for high claimed amounts in the home electricity market reflected, on the one hand, intense competition in the industry and, on the other hand, a shift from channel competition to innovation competition. In channel competition, firms focus on marketing; when they shift to innovation competition, they focus on product innovation, emphasizing product differentiation and product quality, thus giving greater attention to the acquisition and protection of intellectual property rights, and thus the value of patents。
The deputy secretary-general of the chinese electronic chamber of commerce, ryderbo, agreed that, with the restructuring of the domestic electricity industry, the increase in patent wars was a necessary trend. In the past, price competition, product competition and so on has given way to competition in core technologies, and who has more advanced products and more technology reserves can take the initiative in new competition。
It is important to note, however, that, according to ryderbot, patent protection between firms inevitably mixes emotional factors and commercial purposes, and that if the “rights defence” is not limited to reasonable limits, with a focus on peer-to-peer pressure, the result will inevitably be vicious competition, with both losses and even the impact on fish。
It is widely recognized that, after decades of development, the tentacles of the electricity industry in china and china have spread to all corners of the world, and intellectual property rights, including patents, have become “inexorable”. For a long time, the international market has called into question the performance of chinese enterprises represented by domestic electric power companies in terms of intellectual property protection. According to some views, many chinese enterprises rely on advanced technology from abroad to occupy international markets and, on this basis, advocate the introduction of trade sanctions and trade barriers against chinese enterprises and industries。
Wu handong, director of the centre for intellectual property research of the university of economics and economics of south-central china, said that first-class companies sold technology, best-class companies sold standards, and that a strong measure of business performance was whether they had first-class proprietary technology and had first-class international brands. “in my view, chinese enterprises have a long way to go to be strong and good. It is no exaggeration to say that intellectual property rights (iprs) are the main battleground for global corporate competition and that the final focus of competition between firms and firms in the market is intellectual property”。
In recent years, the value of china's intellectual property rights has been accelerating and has been pushing china to create a transformation towards china. “strengthening the intellectual property base will not only help chinese firms grow into transnational corporations with global reach, but will also enable them to expand markets and allocate resources globally.” private chen, director of the world intellectual property organization’s china office, said。
The giant seeks “the rise of intellectual property rights”
In contrast to the former reliance on the low-cost advantages of the “world factory” to drive exports, china’s hard power in the area of science, technology and innovation has now become its newest brand。
The united states corporate law and intellectual property expert sun mingjiang said that many enterprises were currently facing transformational escalation, which posed many challenges to the electricity industry, most notably the unprecedented risk of intellectual property protection. Moving from domestic markets to international markets, from traditional domestic power to intelligent homes, and smart manufacturing means that the united states not only changes business models and technology development models, but also “emerges” in intellectual property protection to cope with more complex market competition。
“m&as and transformations mean that our business is moving into high-risk areas and markets, with more cutting-edge, more basic, more common technological research and development replacing short-term and flat-scale product development, and without effective protection of their technological assets and control of the risk of intellectual property abuse, businesses are likely to experience major setbacks in the international market.” sun mingjiang says。
The upgrading of products themselves is also prompting chinese enterprises to upgrade their intellectual property protection capabilities. Sun ming il said that, after moving from traditional household electricity to intelligent homes and robotics, american products were gaining widespread access to the internet, artificial intelligence, and these were very much intellectual property-intensive industries, and sales markets generally had more stringent intellectual property rights to protect the environment, requiring enterprises to meet multinational corporate standards for intellectual property systems and institution-building。
The achievements of haile in the area of intellectual property rights, as a leading enterprise in the domestic electricity sector, are all the more commendable. On 19 november, the national intellectual property authority issued the results of the 19th china patent award review, in which haile received the single patent gold award in the electric sector, based on “linear compressor technology”. At the same time, heil won two prizes for patenting designs and five prizes for patent excellence, bringing the total to eight。
Recently, thanks to the trust and support of one billion users around the world, haile also held a “month of thanks” in december, which brought together 52 new products from the world's six brands and launched a high-quality, globalized consumption feast in 42 cities。
Behind all this is the important role that haile has played at four levels: global resource integration, overseas patents, international standard-setting, and national science and technology demonstration. (reporter fung yong, wang climb)
