Text/Hop Jump Said Technology
For a long time in the past, most U.S. companies made a fortune on patented technology. The most typical is Qualcomm, which has made a lot of money on 3G, 4G and 5G communication patents. Renny Baldwin, a Qualcomm executive, has said that Qualcomm's inventions are in every smartphone, whether or not they use Qualcomm's chips.
It can be seen that Qualcomm has eaten a lot of dividends in patents. However, many U.S. companies enjoy the advantages of their own patents, and often like to "prostitute for nothing" for the patent advantages of others, such as the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei sued the American telecommunications giant Verzion.
It is reported that the American company Verzion has used Huawei's optical transmission network, computer network, download security and many other patents in the past. According to the relevant patent agreement, the American company should pay Huawei a lot of royalties. It's just that they never thought that they would come to the door at Huawei, and they didn't even admit that they used Huawei's patents, and even wanted to say that Huawei had also infringed on their own 12 patents.
It is not difficult to see that at that time, Verzion was planning to prostitute Huawei's patents for nothing. In fact, the lawsuit between the two parties has also dragged on for many years, and it was only after Huawei's strong statement that the company had no choice but to sign a settlement agreement and compensate for the patent fees.
Although this matter has passed, American chip companies have repeatedly wanted to prostitute other people's patents in an endless stream. For example, during this time, American companies were faced with patent lawsuits.
According to a report released by South Korean media BusinessKorea on June 17 local time, South Korea's patent management company Mimir launched a lawsuit against the storage giant Micron Technology Co., Ltd., accusing Micron of infringing some patents held by the company, and claiming about 3.5 billion yuan from Micron in accordance with the law. It is worth noting that this company is the first time that a U.S. semiconductor company has been sued, along with Tesla, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo.
Many people may be curious, this company does not seem to have a good name, especially in the field of storage, which is owned by SK hynix, Samsung, and Micron. So where did this company come from? Is it the so-called "patent troll" that everyone used to say?
According to the information inquired, this company is a patent management enterprise, that is, a non-patent implementation subject. However, according to the emergence of NPE, companies can rely on their own patents to earn a certain amount of income without personally leaving the market. To put it simply, although I don't do this industry, I have this patent, and if you use my patent, you will also have to give me money. It is also necessary to remind here that in the storage industry, because the major giants have more or less patents in their hands, in order to reduce the expenditure of patent fees, they generally choose the method of cross-licensing.
This raises a problem, that is, there is no way for companies that do not go to the market in person, and for companies that use patents, they have to pay more patent fees. This may also be why Micron Technology has become where it is now after using other people's patents.
However, Micron is really unreasonable, it is understood that the South Korean company has acquired 1,500 semiconductor patents from SK hynix in May, including patents related to circuits, voltages, and measurement equipment. With the company holding the patent, Micron can't do anything even if it doesn't want to give it. If nothing else, in the end, Micron had to obediently give the 3.5 billion yuan in compensation.
However, this is not a key point, the point is that behind this incident has raised a more serious problem, that is, the patent market for semiconductors is about to change.
In the past, many people were disliked by companies that only had patents but did not enter the market, and they thought that this was pure "patent trolls". In fact, there are many companies that are miserable by such enterprises, and they have to pay a lot of royalties. But things seem to have changed now, because since the advent of NPE companies, there have been countless cases of companies specializing in making money from patents and suing companies involved in infringement.
For example, in 2022, one of the NPE companies launched a related infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics and TSMC for the Intel patents it holds. In addition, in June 2023, Samsung also transferred the patents in its hands to its subsidiaries, and used the subsidiaries to file relevant infringement lawsuits on behalf of Samsung. It is worth noting that many passenger aircraft giants around the world have begun to join this ranks, such as Micron selling more than 400 of its patents to NPE companies at the end of 2023.
Obviously, now they no longer plan to adopt the previous cross-licensing model, but want to transfer the patent to the NPE company, and collect a certain amount of patent fees through the NPE company, which is what the author calls a change. Because, this means that the future model will change from the competition for technology to the competition for patents, everyone is rushing to make money for patents, who will engage in technology? It is true that the patent itself is important, but the technology is even more important. If this situation continues, the improvement of semiconductors in the future may be worrying.
Moreover, this is not a good thing for us. On the one hand, this is because we didn't pay much attention to patents before, and although a lot has changed in the past few years, we are still at a disadvantage compared to the foundation they have been working on for many years. Of course, being at a disadvantage isn't entirely bad, after all, we've accelerated our patents, and we're going to catch up with them sooner or later. It's just that if everyone is looking for a patent, and this patent doesn't have any technical help, then what kind of situation do you think our domestic semiconductor industry will become?
To put it mildly, in terms of making money, most of our domestic enterprises will not let go of any opportunity they can find. On the other hand, in the case that most patents cannot be cross-licensed, we will have to pay more royalties. It is equivalent to saying that the certain patents we have developed ourselves do not have much effect. Moreover, we don't know how much it will cost and how many lengthy patent infringement lawsuits it will have to go through when foreign companies are determined to earn revenue from patents. This is simply not conducive to the current strategy of carefully developing technology in the field of semiconductors.
All in all, in the author's opinion, the change in the patent licensing model is not a good thing for the global semiconductor development pattern, and if this scope is expanded in the future, the impact will be incalculable.
So, in your opinion, is it a good thing or a bad thing that semiconductor patents have changed their model today? Everyone is welcome to leave a comment, like and share this!