Study On The Application Of Patent Litigation In Patent Strategy Of Enterprise

The markets of smartphones are highly competitive. These markets are characterized with frequent product introductions and rapid technological advances. The companies in the developed countries are experienced with using litigation as a competition strategy, to treat patents as intangible "products", and to utilize judicial proceedings as an effective way to achieve the purpose of gaining the market share and ultimately gain market competitive advantage. Behind the changes of the market share, heated patent disputes can be seen among these companies in the legal area. Apple Inc. was sued the most and also the one who filed patent infringement complaints the most, one of which was the eye-catching “patent trial of the century” between Apple and Samsung, a Korean company who sell smartphones based on Android system most successfully.In this paper, patent litigation is studied from the perspective of market competition and coporation patent strategy, taking Apple Inc. as the example and the U.S. patent rules as the background to illustrate the application of patent litigation in patent strategy and to elaborate the point that patent litigation are being used as business competetion measure to achieve business goals, and patent litigation should be the guide of coporation patent operation strategy. Details of the patent dispute between Apple and Samsung, including the background, causes, the complaints and counter-complaints, the legal proceedings, pleading strategy, and the trial process and verdicts of this lawsuit are also elaborated in this paper. Chinese smart phone companies are in the process of expanding overseas. They may encounter competitors with strong patent portfolio who might use patent litigation to win market competition or charge high patent license royalty with the threat of patent litigation. This article aims to make the domestic companies to learn from the firms in the developed countries to use patent litigation as market competition strategy, and provide advice on preventing the risk of being sued and solve patent disputes encountered in the process of entering into the foreign markets.