EMPIRICAL STUDY ON ESSENTIAL PATENTS IN DVD AND MPEG STANDARDS PATENT POOLS

摘要

How companies develop inventions which are essential for technical standards? In this paper, utilizing patent data, we empirically investigate what kinds of technological search enables companies to obtain essential patents included in DVD 3C, DVD 6C, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Visual patent pools. On the basis of previous studies, we adopt three types of technological search: Local Search, Beyond Local Search, and Pioneering Approach to analysis of essential patents in patent pool. Our result shows inventions included in essential patents are developed by Pioneering Approach, where researchers look into roots of technological difficulties, ascertain their bottom lines, and struggle with novel technical solutions. As far as the analysis in a unit of a patent, essential patents are obtained neither by Local Search which explores technological fields which are well experienced in a company nor by Beyond Local Search in which researchers search for technical solutions in technological domains unfamiliar to them.