특허전문관리회사(NPE)의 사업모델과 특허권의 행사현황

Abstract

NPE, Non-Practicing Entity is an corporation that makes profit through enforcing its patent rights without producing products from the patents. Its advent came from the U.S. patent and litigation system, that is advantageous to patent owner, like discovery, injunction, damage, venue shopping. Also, contingency free-based agreement encouraged NPE to litigate even baseless claim because it costed almost nothing even after losing the lawsuit. With the news that Korean companies suffered astronomical damage from patent infringement lawsuits from NPE, NPE came to arouse deep concern in Korea. NPEs have various business models. They includes the followings: ① Enforcing patent rights through licensing and raising lawsuits, ② financial firms that lend loans to NPE, ③ IP broker, ④ Asset management firm, ⑤ IP-based transaction firm, ⑥ Software company that develop patent analysis software. While NPE came to be regarded as an independent business model, the concept of monetizing IP has attracted attention from many companies. This paper discussed the framework of business model, which has been seriously discussed in business management area. Using the framework, the NPE business models has been analysed piece by piece. Evaluating the business model, two fundamental standard was raised. First, the business model should be sustainable in a long term. In other words, the income statement of a company using the business model should be positive or increase. In addition, regarding that companies have limited resources, the business model has its focus, which means that the company should decide where it will pour its resources. The components of the business model are followings: ① Customer segment that is group of organization and people which company tries to reach and serve, ② Value proposition that is group of products and service that create value for customer segments, ③ Channels that describe how to communicate with customer segments and deliver value proposition, ④ Customer relationships that describe type of relationship with customer segments, ⑤ Revenue streams that companies earn from customer segments, ⑥ Key resources that describe important assets to operate the business model, ⑦ Key activities that describe important works to operate the business model, ⑧ Key partners that describe networks between supplier and partners, ⑨ Cost structure that describes important costs to operate the business model. To build a groundwork to analyse further NPE business models, this paper inquired typical NPEs from the models. They includes Intellectual Venture of aggressive NPE, SPH America and Blue Stone Innovation from Korean capital, RPX․AST․OIN from defensive NPE, Invention Capital with Korean NPE business model. With the trend of monetizing IP, NPE should be regarded as an accepted business model, which means that Korean companies should proactively use NPEs to maximize their profits. This means that companies should use NPE to depend companies from unexpected patent litigation and to enforce their patents for harvesting their investment.