With the emergence of COVID-19, it is not easy to even keep our daily life safely. Travel has become even more dangerous. Naturally, ‘camping’, which allows you to distance yourself from others as much as possible, has begun to emerge as an alternative. According to the statistics, customizing small cars has been allowed since last year, the number of motor home customizing has increased by 14 times1) compared to the previous year.
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In this patent trend analysis, we’re going to take a look at the patent application trend of technology2) related to 'camping car', which has recently attracted public attention.
1.
Application status by year and country
About
5,700 patents related to camping cars have been filed in major countries3) over
the past 20 years, which has increased sharply since 2013. By country, the US
and China have the largest number of applications with approx. 30%, followed by
Korea with approx. 10% and Germany with 9%. As long as the non-face-to-face
life continues, patent activities are not expected to run down.
2. Application Status by Applicant
Looking
at the status of each applicant, Dometic Corporation, Thor Industries, and
Lippert Components were identified as the top applications. Sweden's Dometic Group
was the leisure equipment division of electronics company Electrolux, but
became independent in 2001 and provides various devices and control solutions
related to camping. Thor Industries is an American recreational vehicle
manufacturer with approx. 40% of the North American camper market. Airstream
and Jayco, which are famous for their motorhomes, are also subsidiaries of
Thor, and in 2018 they acquired Hymer, Germany's largest manufacturer of
recreational vehicles. Meanwhile, Repert Components is an American recreational
vehicle-related device and component manufacturer.
3.
Application status by nationality
As
a result of examining the applicant's nationality, the United States and China
are the most, followed by Korea and Germany. In detail, the overall proportion
of domestic applications was high with 80% of the total number of domestic
applications. Of these, when comparing the United States, China, Korea and
Germany, the proportion of foreigners in the United States and Germany is over
19% while that of China and Korea is less than 5%.
4.
Family and citation status
Next,
let's check the family status. While 69% of all patents owned a patent family
in one country, there were cases of having patent family in more than 11
countries. The top applications are Sirius Technology (Norway) patents related
to camping car toilets and Tomtom International (Netherlands) patents related
to vehicle navigation.
On the other hand, when looking at the citation status, it was confirmed that 60% of the total was never cited, but about 7% were cited in 11 or more documents. Among these, the upper applications are a patent for the structure of a recreational vehicle of Alfa Leisure (USA), and for the position and motion control of recreational vehicles of Lippert Components (USA) and Actuant Corporation (USA).
5.
Application Status by IPC
The
patent classification code is concentrated on B60 (vehicles in general). If you
look at it in detail, the B60P (vehicles for special loads of objects) is the
most, followed by E04H, B60R, B60J, and B60H related to the internal/external
device and control of the camper. You can also check out the trailer field
B62D.
< footnote >
1) Motorhome tuning
increased by 3.7 times in the last 8 months... Deregulation and Corona Impact,
2020.11.17 (https://www.hankyung.com/car/article/202011177467Y
)
2) Review focusing
on vehicle structure and equipment for camping or technology related to
operation and control
3) Patents in
Korea, USA, Japan, China, EP, PCT, Germany, UK, France, Russia, India, and
Taiwan
4) Hyundai Motor
also entered the camping car market… Prices start at 48.99 million won, and on
July 2, 2020 (https://news.mt.co.kr/mtview.php?no=2020070208374417416
)
