IP Portfolio Planning

2022.06.23 Alvyn Lin

As a critical component of electric vehicles, batteries not only affect the endurance and performance of electric vehicles: they are also a key aspect of electric vehicles’ possible popularity in the future. With the rise of the electric vehicle industry, the global power battery field is also gradually moving towards a more mature stage where a hundred schools of thought compete in a rather fierce manner. Both Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL) and China Aviation Lithium Electricity Technology Co., Ltd. (formerly known as China Aviation Lithium Battery Co., Ltd., or CALB) are China-based power battery manufacturers. Their batteries are...

2020.10.20 Steven Chang

Since the debut of Apple’s Airpods in 2016, it’s hard not to notice increasing numbers of people enjoying music and videos with a pair of small, white, streamlined earbuds in their ears. As reported this September by DigiTimes, the PCB and IC substrate suppliers have seen a significant rise in the shipment of True Wireless Stereo (TWS) gadgets in the second half of 2020. We didn’t need to wait until the end of 2020 to see that happen, as Apple’s financial statement — published in 2019 — shed some light on what was to come. Apple’s 2019 10-K report stated...

2020.10.06 Patrick Liu

Researchers at the University of North Texas announced[1] this year on September 24, that they plan to use the 1 million USD, provided by the National Science Foundation, to establish the first framework in the United States that allows self-driving cars to share data with each other.  Standardizing the data between self-driving cars is an important infrastructure for achieving “cooperative perception” of the vehicles.   Different brands of self-driving cars use different sensors and software, making it difficult for data sharing between the cars. The Vehicle-to-Everything’s (V2X) purpose is to solve this problem through cloud services using the above framework, so...

2020.09.09 Kimberly Uy

The USPTO recently rejected two patent applications filed, which named an AI “creativity engine” called DABUS as the inventor. Similar patent applications filed under British, German, and European Union patent regulators have also been rejected. Other applications naming DABUS as the inventor filed in China, Japan, India, and several other countries are still awaiting decisions. Now, the creator of DABUS, Stephen Thaler, has filed a lawsuit against the USPTO, claiming that an AI system is capable of generating original inventions.   While the USPTO asserts that “conception—the touchstone of inventorship—must be performed by a natural person,” Thaler argues that the...

2020.09.08 Eugene Lu

In 2001, Medtronic strategically acquired Minimed and Medical Research Group to enter the battlefield of diabetes care management. During the last two years, mergers and acquisitions have also expanded its diabetes market.   In 2018, Medtronic acquired Nutrino, a start-up company. It was aiming for Nutrino’s food database and the algorithm for predicting blood glucose after meals. Medtronic will integrate related technologies into its own diabetes products to help diabetes management. In 2019, Medtronic acquired Klue, a start-up company. Klue uses gesture sensing technology to monitor and record users’ eating behavior and give advice on eating behaviors/habits. Recently, Medtronic announced that it...

2020.08.12 Leo Tsou

COVID-19 is a worldwide pandemic. To solve this crisis, scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and biotech companies—such as AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer, BioNTech, Novavax and J&J—are currently working on finding cures. The world’s urgent need for a vaccine has never been seen before. However, many vaccine developing companies might not notice that they are walking straight into a future patent war. This article explains why there will be a patent war in the near future and provides advice for those vaccine developing companies that are participating in or are going to participate in the race for vaccine development. The Race for COVID-19 Vaccine...

2020.08.11 Patrick Liu

According to reports, the four-year ConVex1 C-V2X (Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything) trial—which the German government invested in—successfully ended last month. Swarco—a leading provider of traffic solutions that participated in the trial—concluded that C-V2X would be added to traffic infrastructure product portfolios based on the trial results. Additionally, last month, Qualcomm, the world’s communications leader, and San Diego Regional Proving Ground (SDRPG) announced the launch of C-V2X direct communication program2 in California, which uses 5.9GHz LTE direct communication technology to provide vehicle communication tests and case studies on real roads.   C-V2X is a connected-vehicle technology that combines wide-area cellular networks and direct communication. Specifically,...

2020.08.04 Bace Tseng

The top 5 LiDAR companies combined received a total aggregate funding of over USD 1 billion. [caption id="attachment_7486" align="alignnone" width="865"] Data source: Crunchbase (2020.1.15), edited by WISPRO[/caption] Among the top five companies, two are from the United States; there is one Israeli company, one Chinese company, and one Canadian company. The total funding for the United States companies amounted to about USD 965 million, followed by the Chinese companies with USD 322 million and the Israeli companies with USD 319 million. Israeli company Innoviz Technologies raised the highest amount of total funding with USD 252 million. The average total funding...