디자인-기술인용 특허정보를 활용한 애플社의 디자인권 전략 도출

초록

Samsung and Apple’s patent war has raised the issues about the importance of design patent and its strategic management. Since a design patent has been manifested in drawings, the lack of patent information was tardy in employing the quantitative analysis so far, in comparison to the research of utility patent. The present study describes the various facets of patent index covering both design and utility patents. We investigated the value of design in Apple©’s case through the analysis of citations using their applied patents. The analysis was conducted with three groups: Utility-Utility patent citation, Design-Design patent citation, and Design-Utility patent citation. We collected fifteen patent index which represent five values of patent – Technological Performance, Technology Spillover, Marketability, Quality of Patent and Innovation. Design-Utility patent citation group has relatively higher values in all areas, compared to other groups. Especially, the top ten highly citied patents in Design-Utility group involve user interface (UI) patent, which is well-known as a core competency of Apple© Design. In additions these were not sub-licensed, but invented on their own. This study contributes to the first quantitative approach in design patent as cues of managing design strategy in company.

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