The Taipei Computer Association (TCA, 台北市電腦公會) intends to create two or three local intellectual property (IP) alliances by the end of this year to help domestic companies transition into global brand names by warding off devious IP lawsuits, TCA chairman Wang Jeng-tang (王振堂) told reporters yesterday.
“The primary objectives of these alliances will be to assist local companies that seek to tap into the rich resources of the ITRI [Industrial technology Research Institute] IP Bank,” Wang said.
SERVICES
The IP Bank provides analyses of potential IP lawsuits before they arise, updates on IP purchases and research, as well as information on judicial systems around the world.
Wang said an IP alliance would ideally consist of three to five related firms. As a team, these firms could share ITRI services and buy and sell each other’s patents when a partner faces legal problems.
“There is a viable market for IP patents out there,” Wang said.
Last year alone, Taiwan received more than 2,700 IP patents, or more than seven patents per day.
KNOWLEDGE
To date, the country has accumulated more than 9,000 patents, ITRI president Johnsee Lee (李鐘熙) said at the briefing yesterday.
“As a result, we possess a large [base of knowledge] to counter malicious lawsuits,” said Lee, adding that ITRI provided assistance on such a matter to Acer Inc (宏碁) three years ago.
Central bank statistics showed that local companies have been paying an increasing number of IP penalty fees in recent years, costing them US$2.32 billion last year alone.
“Typically, lawsuits are not made by rivals in the US or Japan, but rather money-seeking cockroaches who do not even operate in the IT business and have no IP patents,” Wistron Corp (緯創) chairman and chief executive officer Simon Lin (林憲銘) told reporters at the same briefing.
“They sue purely for the money … these are the hardest to protest yourself against,” he said.
LOOPHOLES
Lin said that local companies should “fill the loopholes” around their products, adding, however, that there is no such thing as a “bullet proof” IP package that guarantees freedom from predators.
Lin said IP alliances should not be limited to partnerships among Taiwanese companies, but should rather operate worldwide.
At AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), the company’s strategy over the past four years has been to purchase IP patents aggressively to protect itself, vice chairman Chen Hsuan-bin (陳炫彬) said.
“We own more than 200 patents from the US and more than 2,000 in Taiwan, while we have a couple of hundred in the pipeline ready to be purchased when the time comes,” Chen said.
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