Research On Patent Family And Patent Litigation In The Context Of Patent Thicket

In recent years,patent value has become increasingly prominent.Patents have evolved from traditional protection means to new competitive tools.The patentees began to layout massive patent families around basic patents.It makes the quantity of global patent families growing.Patent families are distributed densely and related closely which lead to the rapid rising of patent thickets.The patentees begin to strategically choose the litigation target and initiate patent litigations at the same time.It causes the continuous increase of patent litigations and increases the cost for the patentees to prevent and respond to patent litigations.It has a serious negative impact on the technological innovation of the patentees.Therefore,faced with the rapid emergence and continuous spread of patent thickets,it is necessary to carry out indepth research on patent families and patent litigations.It could provide decision reference for the patentees to prevent and response to the patent families and patent litigations.In the context of the emergence of patent thickets,the number of patent families and patent litigations continue to grow.The relevant existing researches are sorted out and summarized to cope with this development trend.Therefore,the research design is proposed to carry out targeted research.Firstly,the measure index of patent thicket and patent family is constructed.The evolution stage of patent thicket is divided quantitatively by hierarchical clustering analysis.Patent families is explored in different stages.Then,quantitative index,qualitative index and structural index are constructed.These indices and patent map are employed to analyze and reveal the key features of patent families.Finally,the regression models of patent families and patent litigations,basic patents and patent litigations are constructed.Granger causality test is utilized to clarify the interaction between them.The research on patent families in the evolution of patent thicket shows that it is a dynamic and development process.It will go through germination stage,outbreak stage,growth stage and maturity stage.Patent family plays an important role in patent thicket.The germination stage lasts a long time.The number of valid patents and patent families is small but grows fast.The valid patents in the outbreak stage increase rapidly and accumulate to a high level.The growth of valid patents in the growth stage slows down,and the proportion of patent families is still high.The growth of valid patents in the maturity period continues to slow down,and the proportion of patent families begin to decline.Patent thickets have emerged rapidly in recent years and have a profound impact on technological innovation.In this context,the above quantitative measurement method can be utilized to divide the evolution stage of patent thicket and explore the features of valid patents and patent families in specific technical field.It could provide decision reference for the patentees to prevent and response to the patent thicket and patent families.The research on the features of patent families shows that,in terms of the quantitative features,the excessive growth of patent families leads to the surge of the number of patents,which becomes the main reason for the emergence of patent thickets.In terms of qualitative features,patent families are derived from basic patents and the quality of patent families is lower than that of basic patents.In terms of structural features,the concentration degree of patent families is lower than that of basic patents.Patent families are held by more patentees.In terms of layout features,the number and distribution density of basic patents and patent families increase significantly.Their technical layouts continue to expand.In recent years,foreign patentees tend to layout massive low-quality patent families in China,resulting in the rapid emergence and continuous spread of patent thickets.Therefore,the quantitative analysis method can be used which are proposed in the above research.It is necessary to carry out indepth research on the quantitative,qualitative,structural and layout features of patent families to cope with the emergence and influence of patent families.The research on the interaction between patent families,basic patents and patent litigations show that there is a significant interaction of promotion between patent families and patent litigations.However,there is no interaction of promotion between basic patents and patent litigations.The results of stationary test and co-integration analysis show that there is no cointegration relationship between basic patents and patent litigations,but there is a co-integration relationship between patent families and patent litigations,and there is a long-term stable equilibrium relationship between them.The analysis based on Granger causality test shows that there is a significant interaction of promotion between patent families and patent litigations.The growth of patent families causes the emergence of patent litigations,and the emergence of patent litigations stimulates more layout of patent families.The mutual promotion between them can be utilized.Controlling the quality of patent families can realize the synchronous control of them.Then,we can prevent the overflow of patent families and patent litigations and curb their negative impact on enterprise operation and technological innovation.