1. DRAM giants are facing class actions in connection with the manipulation of chip prices;
Original title: The DRAM Big Three is facing a class action lawsuit for controlling chip prices. The reason behind the rise in the seventh quarter is actually this
According to the microblog news, according to the science and technology blog AppleInsider, Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Micron Technology have encountered a class action lawsuit and were accused of conspiring to limit the supply of DRAM memory chips, thus artificially keeping retail prices high.
It is reported that this class action lawsuit is for all US consumers who purchased and used DRAM chip devices from July 1, 2016 to February 1, 2018, including Mac, iPad and iPhone.
Hagens Berman, a law firm, said that despite the record demand for DRAM chips, the competition between Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Micron Technology can cause chip prices to decline. However, in fact, from the first quarter of 2016 to the third in 2017 In the quarter, the sales of DRAM chips of the three companies more than doubled, due to the decline in the output of the three companies and conspiracy to manipulate chip prices.
'The DRAM market we have revealed is a classic antitrust and price manipulation case. In this case, several major companies have occupied a majority share of the market,' said Steve Berman, Managing Partner of Hagens Berman. Berman) stated that 'Samsung, Hynix, and Micron have not acted according to the rules, in order to obtain greater profits and harm the interests of consumers, disrupting the market.'
For a long time, the DRAM industry has been dominated by the top three. South Korea's Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and the United States of America's Micron Technology have the absolute right to speak in this area, the seats of the three are relatively fixed. The third quarter of 2017 data show that these three companies The market share of revenue was 45.8%, 28.7% and 21.0%, respectively, taking a total of 90% share.
Since the second quarter of last year, industry revenues for DRAM (mainly PC memory, mobile memory, and server memory) have soared, and sales figures have been updated every quarter. In 2017, DRAM chip prices rose by 47%. Sets the biggest increase in 30 years. Previously there was also news that Samsung Electronics is expanding DRAM production capacity.
It is worth mentioning that in a lawsuit filed against DRAM chip makers in 2006, Hagens Berman had helped buyers who paid high chip prices reach a $300 million settlement agreement. The prices of these chips are also made by manufacturers. Pulling up. In 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice found Samsung conspiracy to manipulate the price of DRAM chips. Samsung and SK hynix pleaded guilty and paid a total of US$731 million in criminal fines. Executives of the two companies were sentenced to 3185 days in jail.
2. Ministry of Commerce: The Chinese government attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights The United States disregards facts;
Original Title: The head of the Department of Commerce and Law Department of the Ministry of Commerce responds to the publication of the "Special 301 Report" by the United States.)
We noticed that on April 27, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative issued the “Special Report 301” on the protection of intellectual property rights. For a long time, the U.S. side unilaterally criticized and accused the state of intellectual property rights in other countries and lacked objective standards and fairness. The general opposition of the countries concerned.
In this year’s report, the United States has been viewing the facts of its customers and has continued to include China in its list of “key watch countries.” The Chinese side opposes this and urges the US to earnestly fulfill its bilateral commitments, respect the facts, and objectively, impartially, and sincerely include evaluations. Foreign governments in China have made efforts and achievements in intellectual property.
The Chinese government attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights and regards it as the most important content of the improvement of the property rights protection system. It has been the biggest incentive to increase China’s economic competitiveness. Over the years, China has continued to improve its legislation and continuously strengthen its intellectual property administration and judicial protection. Related systems The level of protection accords with the international prevailing rules. At the same time, China persists in expanding its opening up, implements the negative list system, treats domestic and foreign-funded enterprises equally, and strives to improve foreign investment in the business environment.
With the development of new technologies and global value chains, intellectual property protection has become a common problem faced by human innovation and development. China is ready to work with all countries in the world to strengthen international exchanges and cooperation in intellectual property and jointly meet challenges.
3. Look at China Communications Patent again on the day of intellectual property rights: There are quantity and quality;
On April 26th, we ushered in the 18th World Intellectual Property Day. The theme of this year's World Intellectual Property Day is 'The driving force of change: women's participation in innovation and creativity'.
As we all know, the standards of the communications industry are the supreme technology industries, and patents are the key among them. Women play an important role in mobile communications standards, 5G and other patents.
Today, we ushered in the 18th World Intellectual Property Day. As we all know, the communications industry is a standard-oriented technology industry, and patents play an important role.
In recent years, many telecommunications industry enterprises have attached importance to intellectual property rights, and the ranking of global patents has continuously increased. However, on the one hand, many Chinese companies are also frequently harassed by patents. Patent competition has become the focus of corporate competition.
Build a patent moat
More and more companies are aware of the value of innovation. They are reflected in their investment in research and development, and their emphasis on patents.
The data shows that in 2017, the amount of intellectual property creation in China has risen. The annual number of invention patent applications reached 1.382 million, an increase of 14.2% year-on-year, ranking the first in the world for seven years in a row; the number of PCT international patent applications received was 51,000, a year-on-year increase. 12.5%, ranked second in the world; the number of invention patents per 10,000 population reached 9.8. The number of applications for trademark registrations was 5.748 million, an increase of 5.72% year-on-year, ranking first in the world for 16 years in a row. There were 14.92 million valid trademark registrations. The number of applications for international trademark registration for Madrid trademarks submitted by applicants in China was 4,810, ranking third in the world. Works, computer software copyright registrations reached 2.002 million, 745,400, respectively, a year-on-year increase of 25.15%, 82.79%.
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In 2017, the top ten enterprises (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) for China's invention patent grants were: State Grid Corporation of China (3622), Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (3293), China Petrochemical Corporation (2567) , BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd. (1845), ZTE Corporation (1699), Lenovo (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (1454), Zhuhai Gree Electric Co., Ltd. (1273), Guangdong Oupo Mobile Communication Co., Ltd. The company (1222), China National Petroleum Corporation (1008) and SMIC International (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (862).
Last year, Huawei, LeTV, ZTE, Guangdong Oupo, and Xiaomi ranked the top ten in China's invention patent applications.
Four characteristics of invention patents
According to the relevant person in charge of the State Intellectual Property Office in the press briefing at the beginning of the year, the relevant data of China’s invention patents in 2017 mainly presented four characteristics.
First, there was a steady flow of patent creation. The number of domestic invention patent applications and authorizations increased by 15.4% and 8.2% respectively from 2016; the number of invention patents per 10,000 population reached 9.8, an increase of 1.8 from the end of 2016.
Second, the dominant position of domestic enterprises' innovation has been further consolidated. The proportion of companies in domestic invention patent applications and ownership has reached 63.3% and 66.4%, respectively, and the contribution of the company to the growth of domestic invention patent applications has reached 73.5%.
Third, China’s enterprises’ ability to deploy overseas patents continued to increase. In 2017, there were 44 domestic companies that filed more than 100 PCT international patent applications in the year, an increase of 18 from 2016.
Fourth, the gap between patent layout and foreign countries in some areas. Among the 35 technology areas divided by the World Intellectual Property Organization, the number of domestic invention patents in 2017 was higher than that of foreign invention patents in China, up to 30, compared to 2016. One more, but from the perspective of maintaining the number of invention patents held for more than 10 years, the number of domestic still in the 29 technical fields is less than that of foreign countries.
In this regard, industry experts said that it is necessary to soberly realize that patents are not just competitions but quality of competitions. Wang Lei, the Intellectual Property Development Research Center of the State Intellectual Property Office, said in an interview with the “Communications Industry News” (Net). According to the characteristics of the communications industry patents, according to the order of importance, the underlying technology, the standard framework technology, and the application technology guaranteed to be realized. The deficiency in the underlying technology patents is the most urgent problem to be solved in the future development of China's communications industry.
Tao Xinliang, a professor at the Institute of Intellectual Property at Shanghai University, said that the overall improvement of patents in China's communications industry does not come overnight. He said that there is a one-sided pursuit of performance projects in intellectual property strategy, and the pursuit of quality must be pursued from the pursuit of quantity in intellectual property strategy. Change, we should grasp the direction of future core technologies. Communication Industry Network
4.2017 China's Patent Licensing Distribution: Zhejiang University, HIT and Tsinghua University Top Three Universities;
21st Century Economic Research Analyst Zhou Hui Intern Zhang Jianlin
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From the perspective of urban distribution, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai are in absolute leading positions. Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Chengdu are located in the second tier; in terms of universities, Zhejiang University, HIT and Tsinghua lead.
Intellectual property is increasingly becoming a core element of strategic resources and competitiveness for development. The number of patents has also become one of the important indicators for measuring local innovation capacity and regional competitiveness.
On April 26, on the eve of the National Intellectual Property Day, the 2017 Annual Report of the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China, which the 21st Century Business Herald reporter learned from the State Intellectual Property Office, showed that in 2017, the number of Chinese invention patent applications reached 1.382 million. , an increase of 14.2% year-on-year, ranking the first in the world for seven consecutive years; PCT international patent applications received 51,000, an increase of 12.5% year-on-year, ranking second in the world.
According to the analysis of the regional patent authorization data in the aforementioned report, the 21st Century Economic Research Institute found that the number of domestic patent grants has differentiated significantly. Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, the major economic provinces, have led the country in the number of patents granted, and have been the leading universities in Hubei, Shaanxi, and other research institutes. There is no obvious advantage in the provinces that have gathered.
From the perspective of urban distribution, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai are in absolute leading positions. Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Chengdu are located in the second tier; in terms of universities, Zhejiang University, HIT and Tsinghua lead.
Leading economic province patent licensing
According to the analysis of the annual status data of domestic provinces' patent authorizations in 2017, taking a look at the scale of provincial patent grants in the province, three echelon distributions are presented.
The number of patents granted to the first echelon exceeds 100,000. This part is mainly concentrated in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Beijing, Shandong and other places. Among them, Guangdong Province ranks first with 332,652 patents, while Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces Of the 227,187 patents, 213,805 patent licenses ranked second and third.
The second echelon, that is, the amount of patent authorization exceeded 10,000. The report shows that except for the economic and technological innovations in Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu provinces, the strong momentum in technological innovation far exceeds that of other provinces and regions in China, such as Shanghai and Fujian, Sichuan, Anhui, Henan, and other eastern regions. And the large populations in the Midwest also took the lead in follow-up, with Shanghai, Fujian and Sichuan taking the lead in the second tier with 72,806, 68,304 and 64,006 respectively.
There are no more than 10,000 patent authorizations for the third echelon. This part is mainly concentrated in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia and Hainan. Among them, Inner Mongolia and Hainan have 6,271 pieces respectively, and 2133 patents are authorized. gap.
The 21st Century Institute of Economic Research believes that the comparison of the number of patents in various provinces and cities roughly shows the stepwise distribution characteristics declining from the east to the central and western regions. The regional differentiation is obvious, which is basically consistent with the spatial pattern of regional economic development in China.
In the second echelon, Hubei and Shaanxi Provinces where colleges and universities’ scientific research institutes were located did not perform well. Among them, 46,369 were granted in Hubei and 34,554 were in Shaanxi. Among them, Hubei ranked behind Anhui and Henan, and Shaanxi’s data. Only half of Fujian.
According to the 21st Century Economic Research Institute, Beijing is a traditional political, economic, scientific and cultural center, scientific research institution and scientific and technological enterprise. The number of patents has always been in the leading position in the country. The reason why Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang are far ahead is related to the local Economic development, private economy is not uninterested, local innovative companies are more.
Of the top ten companies in the national patent grants in 2017, four are headquartered in Guangdong, including Huawei, ZTE, Gree and Guangdong Opal Mobile Communications.
In 2017, the proportion of enterprises in China’s domestic invention patent applications and possessions reached 63.3% and 66.4%, respectively, which was 1.6 and 0.9 percentage points higher than in 2016. The maintenance rate of effective invention patents for domestic companies reached more than 5 years, reaching 70.9%. Compared with 2016, it has increased by 3.4 percentage points. It can be seen that the number of local patents is closely related to the degree of innovation activity of local enterprises.
Sub-provincial cities in Shenzhen lead
According to the analysis of the annual status data of some of the sub-provincial-level cities in China in 2017, we can see that the special economic zone Shenzhen is the only one that holds a total of 94,221 patent grants in 2017, which exceeds that of many domestic provinces. Followed by Guangzhou, The three sub-provincial cities of Hangzhou and Chengdu have respectively 60,270 pieces, 42,311 pieces of patents, and 41,091 pieces of patents. Ningbo, Nanjing, Wuhan and Xi'an all have more than 25,000 patents authorized.
From the perspective of urban distribution, the top seven cities in the sub-provincial cities are all southern cities, and the eighth place is Xi’an. The four cities in the northeast are Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang, and Dalian. The overall performance is backward.
Among them, except for Harbin, which had achieved 12,117 patent authorizations in 2017, there were no over 10,000 patents authorized in Shenyang, Dalian, and Changchun, of which Shenyang had 9891 patents authorized, and Changchun had 8,189 patents granted, which Dalian owns. 7768 patent grants.
According to the 21st Century Institute of Economic Research, Shenzhen is still the center of innovation and entrepreneurship of enterprises nationwide after Beijing, followed by Guangzhou, and Hangzhou and Chengdu have become the most innovative cities in second-tier cities. Nanjing and Ningbo in the Yangtze River Delta also performed well. However, universities in Wuhan and Xi'an must also work hard to give full play to their strengths in scientific research and improve the vitality of innovation in local enterprises and the whole society. In particular, local enterprises should be encouraged to increase R&D investment and enhance their R&D and innovation capabilities.
Among them, Hangzhou, a second-tier city with better performance, has taken Hangzhou as an example. Hangzhou has issued the “13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Intellectual Property Rights in Hangzhou”, “Administrative Measures for Hangzhou’s Patent Special Funds,” and “Measures for the Administration of Intellectual Property Funds for the Management of Key Industries in Hangzhou”. “Interim Measures on the Management of Hangzhou Patented Insurance and Subsidy Funds” and other documents. Chengdu also began implementing the five major projects of intellectual property management reform, escort development, quality improvement, innovation and environment optimization in 2018, and started Chengdu to build a national intellectual property market. Create a city.
Zhejiang University, HIT, Tsinghua Homestead
The report shows that in 2017, domestic invention patents accounted for the top ten colleges and universities, Zhejiang University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Tsinghua University were 1951, 1576, respectively, and 1,506 patents were among the best.
The top ten universities authorized by the remaining patents are: 1452 in Southeast University, 1186 in Electronic Science and Technology University, 1148 in Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1146 in South China University of Technology, 1110 in Xidian University, and 1,087 in Shanghai Jiaotong University. Jilin University 1045.
In fact, the three universities of Zhejiang University, Harbin Institute of Technology and Tsinghua University have long been leading other science and engineering universities in terms of valid patents and patent authorization.
In recent years, Zheda’s invention patent applications and authorizations have been at the forefront of the nation. The media publicly reported that Zheda not only has strong academic disciplines, talents, and excellent capital reserves, but also actively promotes the planning of curriculum-related settings, such as school-specific settings. The 'patent application' and 'patent writing' courses enhance students' ability to systematically master the patent application process and skills. Zhejiang University official website also sees series of lectures on how to apply for patent training.
HIT’s patent applications and authorizations immediately followed. According to the data, HIT’s goal was to establish a “principal of strong schools” and set up an intellectual property rights management committee for the school’s main body of directors’ responsibility, and through the introduction of patent “cost” applications and post-grant grant incentives. The model is to guide the patentization of high-tech achievements and promote the improvement of the quality of patents; to guide funds from 'applying for funding' to 'operating support' to further improve the quality and effective patent ownership.
In April 2018, data from the “2017 China Patent Investigation Report” published by the State Intellectual Property Office showed that 58% of colleges and universities believe that there is a lack of professional team for technology transfer when answering the biggest obstacle in the patent transformation related to patent transformation. 39.9% of universities believe that 'professional technology is relatively low'; 38.2% of universities believe that 'professional technology industrialization is underfunded'; 24.9% of universities believe that 'inventors (teachers or employees) are poorly motivated'. It shows that the scientific research unit is slightly higher than the major universities in China in terms of the conversion rate of scientific and technological achievements and the percentage of scientific and technological achievements applied for patents.
'Technology is not enough', 'funds are insufficient', 'poor enthusiasm' has become the three major factors that hinder university patent innovation. And these three factors are precisely the distinction between scientific research units and universities.
The 21st Century Institute of Economic Research believes that patented inventions in universities are gold mines. They should improve the policy system of property rights conversion. They can increase the income and enthusiasm of researchers through close integration of production, research, and research. They can also increase the efficiency of patents and strengthen institutions of higher learning and intermediaries and enterprises. The horizontal relationship between them will promote the transformation of university patent achievements. The establishment of a common interest distribution and protection mechanism for technological progress in universities and colleges and universities will protect intellectual property rights from the policy level and realize the sharing of benefits. 21st Century Economic Research Institute
5.Surface phone to come? Patent display: 'folding' is a highlight of the aircraft
A year or two ago, it was reported that Microsoft was going to launch a mobile phone called 'Surface Phone', but for now there is still no exact information on the launch of this mobile phone. In the industry, people have information on the Surface Phone. There are also all kinds of guesses.
The latest news shows that at present, Microsoft is developing a new mobile phone codenamed 'Andromeda', which is probably the legendary Surface Phone.
Recently, two patents related to the Surface Phone have been exposed on the Internet. The patent shows that the phone will adopt a folding screen design and support hinged gesture control and image intelligent correction.
From a patent description entitled "Brightness Control of Curved Edge Screens", it is known that it integrates a screen display layer and an OLED surface layer to realize curved folding of a display screen, and completes the same plane screen by repositioning the curvature of the display. Image display, so as to achieve the so-called screen folding plane display effect of future 'folding mobile phones'.
In addition, in the second patent entitled "Interactive Input on Physical Hinges", this 'folding cell phone' also supports 'hinge bending control', which allows the display of the screen to be displayed by the sensor detecting the curvature of the hinge.
It can be seen from the patent figure that this kind of effect is mainly for the display effect of the mobile phone under different usage patterns. For example, when the screen is fully opened, the screen will display the screen in full screen, and when it is fully folded, it will become a single screen display. Another screen acts as a secondary screen when folded.
In addition, the patent also mentions that it can control the degree of bending of the hinge to achieve the control of related functions, such as multi-task switching and so on.
Of course, the 'patents' are very ideal. When it comes to bringing real products to consumers is another matter. However, these patent features can indeed provide a good reference for the future of 'folding mobile phones'. .
In addition, some people may say that now is the era of 'all-round screen' trend, 'folding screen' is far from humans, and in fact, not far away. Flexible folding screens have been available, including giants such as Apple, LG, and Samsung. A variety of messages were created to create a folding screen mobile phone, among which the more familiar Samsung Galaxy X folding mobile phone will also be released at the end of this year.
Maybe, when the Surface Phone is available, the mobile phone market will bring a little different changes.