Dr. Yeap Lectures: Based On Reflective Cycle Structure

Stage 1, Description:

Over the past several weeks we experienced enjoyable learning process with Dr. Yeap, who has over 25 years of experience across the infocomm technology value chain that spans industry, government and academia. We are impressed by Dr. Yeap’s profound knowledge and novel teaching method. During these sessions, lectures were carried out combined with plenty of class activites on group basis and vedio learning of business cases. I participated in all the acitivites positively and gained a lot. There are 5 main aspects covered by Dr. Yeap’s lectures: IP blockchain, frame of IP management, IP commercialisation, Technology Mapping and Patent Searches, and the case study of business pitch.

IP Block Chain

The blockchain technology can help to identify authentic copyright

The rights of the copyright main body can be register in blockchain, "timestamp" will be applied to work done in blockchain and provides proofs of existence and identity for any given time point, which equivalent to set a permanent identification that cannot be tampered for work.

In addition, blockchain records the update of information in chronological order, which is conducive to record each stage of the work and confirm the author of work. Burstall & Clark (2017) pointed out that the timestamp stamped in the blockchain can prove that someone accessed a file at a specific time. The timestamp is stored in the blockchain and can be seen by any participant in the whole network. The author is usually the first person who access the document, thus his identity can be proved.

It also protects personal privacy of the author who wishes to be anonymous or pseudonymous. The information of authors and works on the blockchain corresponds to a specific public key and network address. When others want to obtain authorization to use the work, they will obtain the work through the network address and public key, avoiding revealing the real identity of the author when trading.

IP blockchain provides proof of prior use of trademarks

When putting proof to trademark right, determination for the earliest usage and in the original range trademark need to take consideration of the time to start, the range of goods or services, geographic scope, advertising sales target and sales approach etc., artificial statistics are not only time-consuming, with high cost, but also arises omissions and errors. According to Hua (2018), by applying the "timestamp" of blockchain, the data such as the earliest use time and transaction information of the trademark can be accurately located. And the influence and significant changes of the trademark can be accurately calculated after each transaction.

Therefore, it can solve the problem of trademark proof and better protect the legal rights of trademark owners.

IPOS’s IP Management Framework:

IP management framework includes four stages: Creation, ownership, protection and exploitation. IP creation (contains four method):

1. Technology State of the Art Analysis to visualize the distribution and concentration of sub-technologies in three-dimensional diagram through technology mapping.
2. New Ideas & New Patentable Inventions is to zoom in the 3D result and focus on a specific patent, analyze its evolution history.
3. Technology Competitive Intelligence is used to compare technological capabilities among firms by zooming in the 3D technology distribution diagram.
4. Head Hunting Expert Inventors is a way to acquire IP by purchasing from other firms or recruit the expertise.

IP Ownership Management (contains 5 strategies):

To Invalidate Competitor Patents, which can be done through peripheral patent application and patent cross-licensing strategy. This strategy can be utilized when a basic core IP was created by other firm, without peripheral patents to support, but own firm is unable to create by oneself. At that time, we should shift focus to create and apply for peripheral patents to build a network of which, thus to surround the basic patent. Then we can cross license with companies that have basic patents to enhance competitiveness of both firms.

To Expand from 1 patent to 100，when acuqired one IP, based on this IP to develop a series of related IP. We need to extend and monopoly IP as much as we can because sometimes patent clauses are not perfect, a similar patent from competitors may have ambiguous clause, which may provide infringement opportunities for competitors.

Raise funds from Investors, the premise for fund-rasing is to make reasonable valuation for own patents. The valuation method a of enterprise intellectual property can be divided into cost method, income method and market method.

Cost method refers to use the cost of acquiring an intellectual property as the value of that intellectual property. Specifically, for a patent, the patent value of cost method is the cost of developing the patented technology, determining the right and safeguarding the rights.

Income method is used to predict the market value of the materialized products or services of the intellectual property during the effective existence of the intellectual property, calculate the contribution rate of the intellectual property to the market value, and then calculate the present value of the intellectual property through cash flow translation. Income method can fully reflect the contribution of intellectual property to the sales of enterprises, so the evaluation value is always higher than that obtained through cost method.

The market method refers to use the market transaction value of the existing intellectual property as the value of the similar proposed intellectual properties. However, there may not be any transacted intellectual property in the market that is like the intellectual property to be evaluated, so market method is rarely used in practice.

Head Hunting Expert Inventors, recruit the expertise and provide the R&D funding, thus own the IPR of nes inventions

IP Portfolio ManagementAn enterprise should invest to establish an appropriate portfolio of intellectual property assets, with intellectual property rights in the core business area, and to clear and defend a core market territory that competitors cannot easily enter through the management of their own intellectual property assets. Similar investment strategy as portfolio investment should be utilized when investing on IP, invest on a series of related IP with own products, thus establish a wind fencing for the enterprise. And firms must constantly analyse their rivals’ IP strategy: what are they doing? What wouldn't they do? What are their next development goals? Based on these analysises, the existing intellectual property portfolio is maintained and updated.

IP Protection (include three aspects):

• Prioritisation of Applications means to zoom in geographic distribution of IP, find out the region with most interest in related IP though comparing the related IP change rates, thus prioritize our IP protection in this region first.
• ourcing for Best IP Firms. Invest on the firms with deep pocket, make alignment or merger with them.
• Use of IP Blockchain, as mentioned before, IP Blockchain can be effective to determine the authentic right of IP.

IP Exploitation (contains 6 methods)

The following 6 methods that Dr. Yeap introduced during his lectures are all based on text-mining to establish IP landscape visualization map.

1. E1. To determine what IP to license (in-licensing), we can analyze the assignees and the development history of some specific patents by zooming in the IP landscape, and determine which patents is most relevant to our core business and target customer and thus should be our core patents to license.
2. E2. IP Acquisition, IP landscape also help us to find the companies with appealing technologies, we can compare their IP development histories and determine which IP is most appropriate for us to invest.
3. E3 & E4. Seeking out intelligence can help in the case of suing others or being sued.
4. E5. Technology due diligence, which can be supported by texting mining of IP that reveals the location, application rate of technologies and the focus of related companies, thus supporting investment decision-making.
5. E6. Leverage on expired patents for business advantage: select out expired patents patents that are near their expiry day that are related with our business, then we can leverage the just-expired patents, which are still with considerable residual value.

IP Commercialisation Framework

As mentioned above, the precondition of IP commercialization is the valuation of IP, which can help to locate the existing IP on hand on the commercialisation framework showed below:

After making sensible valuation for IP, commercialisation strategies can be used to exploited existing IP. For example, the transfer of intellectual property rights is usually a strategy adopted by multinational companies with strong innovation capability. By licensing high-quality intellectual property assets to other enterprises in need through intellectual property transfer, enterprises can obtain high intellectual property transfer fees under intellectual property control, accelerate the speed of technology diffusion, and shorten the profit cycle of innovative enterprises.

Technology Mapping and Patent Searches

Paten mapping is a map that combine the patent distribution and geographic information. It usually refers to the visualization of patent information to form a contour map to represent the peak and depression of patent distribution.Patent mapping is important for company R&D strategy. Most patents are not discovered by accidents, but are designed and developed purposefully. Many companies make huge R&D waste by producing products that someone else already has or with similar technology of competitors. Some enterprises want to enter Europe or the United States markets, only found the core technologies are grasped by local companies after putting into a great deal of money in market. If a patent mapping that is clear and away from others’ patents was set in advance for R&D, the quandary for patent application failure plight and attached manpower or material resources will be avoided.

Case study of Business Pitch

I learned 8 business pitch tips from class case study:

1. Make the pitch perfect: prepare for the complex questions in advance, control own nervousness during the pitch;
2. Make potential investors like us, because “people buy people first”;
3. Know all the exactly financial number, never make mistakes on numbers, these mistakes make us less trustable from the investor’s perspective;
4. Check the prototype before the pitch, make sure our prototypes can go through live test, do not show weakness in front of the potential investors;
5. Do comprehensive research about the market, convince the investors that we know our target markets and prove the authenticity of the market research;
6. Make sensible valuation for oneself, be realistic;
7. We have to get the least money we ask for, but effective negotiation skills are need if we want to ask for more.
8. Leave good impression on the investors, the reason that an entrepreneur cannot get funding may be various, but if he/ she impress investors as a credible person, high probability that he will get funding from the investors in the future.

Stage 2, Feelings: What Were You Thinking and Feeling

The lectures of Dr. Yeap are very impressive, inspiring and satisfying, because Dr. Yeap always instructed us to reflect learned knowledge and to think about the application of thought method. And the knowledge taught by Dr. Yeap are practical and fresh, for example how to use blockchain to protect own IP and how to exploit on existing IP, these knowledges are in line with the development of blockchain technology, which we believe can be a future trend.

I always felt energetic in group activities. During group activities, we can not only apply immediately what we have learned into practice, but also benefit a lot from group members. Group work enables us to learn from knowledgeable classmates, my group members specialized in different industry before: engineering, supply chain management, advertising and finance, we all have unique understandings and knowledge within our industry and thus always inspired each other and embrace more creative ideas. Thus, it’s always exciting to start group work because we know we will generate new ideas each day.

My most relaxing time is the group work time with music of Richard Clayderman, when I was immersed in Ballade pour Adeline or lyphard melodie I felt like going back to my childhood, my mom always played Richard Clayderman through an old CD player in bright afternoon when she did needlework or laundry, I remember the lilacs outside my window bloomed quietly with overflowing fragrance, my dog was taking a nap and I was reading fairy tales. Gone these days, but Richard Clayderman’s music is still touching.