Evaluation steps
1. Preliminary communication between the patentee and the evaluation agency
2. Determine the purpose and scope of patent rights evaluation - negotiate fees according to national charging standards
3. The evaluation agency appoints a team to visit the site to inspect the patent research and development situation - collect the information required for patent evaluation
4. After collecting the patent evaluation information, return - The evaluation agency writes a report
5. Issues a draft evaluation report to communicate with the patentee
6 , issue the official version of the report and charge the remaining evaluation fee.
When evaluating a patent, we must first consider and study issues closely related to the patent itself such as its validity, type, and rights term, and accurately grasp the impact. Fundamental factors of patent value.
(1) Whether the "patent" has been approved and whether the approved patent has gone through the opposition process.
The rights in the "patent application" are also intellectual property rights and can be transferred or licensed. However, there are two possible situations for the application to be approved or rejected, and the values in the two situations are completely different. The transferee or licensee must investigate whether the other party's relevant technology or new product is "patented" or "patented".
If the relevant patent has gone through opposition procedures and the opposition has been declared untenable, the validity of the relevant patent will be more reliable, and therefore it will beThe value assessed under the conditions is relatively high. On the contrary, patents that have not gone through opposition procedures have a relatively low assessed value.
(2) Type of relevant patent.
China's "Patent Law" stipulates three different types of patents: inventions, utility models, and designs. Among them, utility model patents and design patents have not passed the substantive After review, it is very likely that someone will file an invalidation application with the Patent Reexamination Board in the future, and it is very likely that the utility model patent or design patent will be declared invalid. Therefore, the value assessment of these two types of patents cannot be treated the same as the value assessment of invention patents.
(3) Whether the relevant patent is a "first patent" or a "second patent" (subordinate patent).
In accordance with the relevant provisions of international treaties and China’s Patent Law, the implementation of the second patent must be licensed by the owner of the first patent. The rights of the second patent No one has the right to independently license third parties to exploit their patents. Without authorization from the owner of the first patent, the owner of the second patent has no right to negotiate a licensing contract with a third party. However, the holder of the second patent has the right to transfer his own patent. At this time, the transferee should understand clearly the possibility of cooperating with the holder of the first patent or obtaining a compulsory license after transferring the second patent. How big. If it is difficult to obtain permission from the first patent owner, the value of the second patent will be reduced accordingly.
(4) Whether the patent owner has a reliable record of paying patent annual fees on time.
Failure to pay patent annual fees may result in the patent being revoked. Although the law provides for recovery procedures, they are too troublesome. If a "patent" for which the annual fee has been missed but may be restored is really transferred, the cost of the restoration process and the loss to the transferee if restoration is not possible must be included in the assessment, which will offset the patent to a certain extent. value.
(5) The period between the expiration of the patent protection period.
This may be the most important factor affecting patent evaluation. Since patent protection is not renewable, this effect is much more important than it is in trademark evaluation. If the patent protection period is only two years, the value of the patent is easier to assess. Because, no matter how the right holder evaluates its patent, the transferee will never receive more than, equal to or close to the sum of the transferee’s two-year projected profits.
(6) Whether the relevant patent is involved in patent disputes such as infringement litigation, invalidation litigation, etc.middle.
Once the relevant patent is involved in this type of litigation, especially before the court makes a ruling, its evaluation must be further discounted from the price evaluated according to general evaluation methods. .
In fact, in real life, the huge information resources contained in patents are far from being fully utilized. For business organizations, patents are the only place where competitors of a business have to disclose certain key information to the public that would not be disclosed elsewhere. Therefore, analysts of corporate competitive intelligence can obtain a large amount of useful information from patent documents through detailed, rigorous, comprehensive, and relevant analysis, so that public patent information can be used by the company, thereby realizing its unique economic value. If you have more questions about patent evaluation, it is recommended to consult relevant professional lawyers. The Legal Savior Network also provides online lawyer consultation services. You are welcome to seek legal consultation.
