3. The analytical result of Samsung vs Apple
The strategies of patent application
The number of national (Korea) patent applications of Samsung was 94,293, and the number of national (USA) patent applications of Apple was 5,205 between the year 2002 and 2011. Quantitatively, Samsung applied 18 times more patents than Apple did.
The R&D investment of Samsung has been increased from 2.7 billion dollars (2002) to 9 billion dollars (2011). The number shows that the R&D investment of Samsung has been increased to 15% per year until it reached the peak point in 2005, and since then it has been decreasing continuously. Samsung’s international application rate had constantly increased between the years 2002 and 2010 from 30% to 80%. Samsung was putting in a great deal of effort on securing the international patents during that period.
Apple is actively applying patent applications in order to increase the number of existing patent. Apple has been trying to expand patent portfolio quantitatively after their trial loss from the patent battle against MS in 2005.
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| <R&D Investment vs. Patent Application Procedure> |
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| <Domestic Patent Application vs. Patent Family ratio> |
[Picture 2] Samsung vs. Apple: Patent Application situation per year
Findings and Observations
We compared the patent application procedure during 2002 to 2006 and 2007 to 2011to see how both companies’ strategies have been changed. The result showed that Samsung’s patent application has been increased sharply in the field of Wireless Communication Networks (H04W), and Apple’s has been increased sharply in the field of Screen displays and icons including User Interface (Locarno Classification 14-04).
Samsung filed total 1,142 cases of patent suits in the field of Wireless Communication Networks during the last ten-years. Samsung filed nearly 14 times more patent suits during 2007 to 2011 than it did during 2002 to 2006. It is a radical growth compared to Samsung’s semiconductor parts.
Samsung semiconductor is the main business part of Samsung that has been slowed down the patent application process decreased by 74% for the past five years. Patents of Wireless Communication Networks field include Long Term Evolution Networks represented by 3G-LTE, Near Field Communication represented by WIFI, and cellular phone web browsing technology represented by WAP (Wireless Application Protocol); these are core business fields of Samsung Mobile. Fuel cell, robot, image processing, and nano-technologies have been rapidly increased during the latest five years. Those fields are highly related to Samsung’s top five promising businesses: solar cell, automobile battery, LED, bio-medicine, and medical devices.
In contrast, Apple has been concentrating on securing design patent rights after they launched i-Phone. Apple applied 99 cases of patents related to screen displays and icon design field (Locarno Classification 14-04) and 186 cases of patents related to data processing equipment as well as peripheral apparatus and devices design field (Locarno Classification 14-02) in last ten years. Especially, the design patents including UI parts have been increased by 9 times during 2007 to 2011 than they have during 2002-2006.
To be continued.
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