Recently, a "love sharing station" has been unveiled in major subway stations in Qingdao one after another. It not only provides passengers with a number of convenient services such as shared power banks, shared umbrellas, paper towel sales, and subway morning newspapers, but also provides emergency medical supplies such as medical kits and defibrillators. Once the machine was launched, it was well received by many passengers and praised it one after another.
The inventor of this project is Liu Tongxin, who is known as the innovation expert. Before that, he had invented and incubated more than a dozen innovative products such as hotel gathering multimedia systems, flexible screen laptops, and mural TVs. In recent years, what has made him famous is undoubtedly his original shared power bank technology solution and business model. "In 2014, I laid out more than 20 shared power bank patents. This is the earliest batch of patents in the field of shared power banks, and three of them are core patents." Liu Tongxin said that due to his original innovation and patent layout in the field of shared power banks, he is known as the "father of shared power banks".
Creativity comes from a trip to the United States
Liu Tongxin’s idea for the shared power bank project originated from a visit to the United States. In June 2014, Liu Tongxin followed a delegation to the United States to investigate innovation and entrepreneurship projects. One night, while he was out, his mobile phone and power bank were dead, which inspired him to invent a shared charging model.
"I thought at that time, if there is a box, I can put the power bank that is dead and replace it with a power bank with electricity, which can solve the charging needs of many users." Liu Tongxin believes that mobile phone users have a rigid demand for battery power in public places, and with the increasing number of smartphone users, the number of users sharing power banks will show a rapid growth trend.
With the idea of "shared charging", Liu Tongxin began to implement it. On the plane back to China, he designed a complete set of technical solutions for shared power banks. After returning to China, he immediately organized the technicians in the laboratory to set up a research and development team to start developing this technical solution.
At the same time as the technology development, he carried out patent layout. "For this project, we have submitted more than 20 patent applications and have been authorized successively. Among them, three patents are the core technologies in the field of shared charging, and their names are’An identifiable mobile phone rechargeable battery and its identification method ‘ (patent number: ZL201410666867.0),’ A mobile phone battery charging replacement system and charging method ‘ (patent number: ZL201410667099.0),’ A mobile phone battery charging case ‘ (patent number: ZL201410667122.6). This is the first batch of shared power bank patents, which is a real process from 0 to 1, and most of them are invention patents." Liu Tongxin said.
Product landing encounters confusion
In November 2014, Liu Tongxin began planning how to turn the drawings into real objects. Since there were no companies in Qingdao that produced power banks, he decided to send the R & D team to Shenzhen to seek partners for power banks.
In Shenzhen, the R & D team has reached a cooperation intention with a number of power bank manufacturers. When the two sides communicated the technical details, the engineers of the R & D team informed the other party of the technical solution, and later, they also showed them the patent application documents.
Liu Tongxin said: "At the end of 2015, I found shared power bank cabinets produced and launched by a Shenzhen Technology Co., Ltd. in several shopping malls in Shenzhen one after another. This was exactly the same as the technical solution of the shared power bank I designed. This surprised me very much. I realized that the technical solution may have been leaked. After I conducted a patent search, I found that this company submitted a large number of utility model patent applications after I submitted the patent application, and this company was raising money everywhere. It kept claiming to investors that they invented the shared power bank. This made me very angry. At that time, I especially wanted to take up legal weapons to protect my legal rights and interests. Later, this company launched several lawsuits against other shared power bank companies."
Look for partners cautiously
With the advent of the sharing economy boom, the business model of shared charging has gradually been recognized by the market, and the number of entrants has increased rapidly. As the inventor of shared power banks and the holder of core patents, Liu Tongxin is also known to more and more people. Many companies have come to seek cooperation, hoping that he can transfer the patent of shared charging to them. He told reporters: "The technical solutions used in the entire power bank industry are inseparable from my three core patents."
In this regard, Liu Tongxin had his own considerations. He hoped that his partners would be companies with big ideas, and he did not want patents to become a tool for corporate competition. After repeated consideration, he finally chose to cooperate with Shenzhen Street Electric Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Street Electric).
Liu Tongxin believes that the market size and scale of Street Power and its strong financial strength can better translate his patented technology into products. "I hope to promote the development of this industry together with leading enterprises," Liu Tongxin said.
Businesses should promote innovation together
Standing in the trend of the sharing economy, shared power bank enterprises have been able to develop rapidly, but at the same time, the market competition in this field has become increasingly fierce, and patent disputes have also arisen. It is understood that, taking Street Electric as an example, there have been dozens of cases of patent infringement sued by Shenzhen Caller Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Caller).
Since March 2017, Caller has initiated more than 30 patent infringement lawsuits against Jiedian in Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou and other places, with a total amount of tens of millions of yuan. In addition, Caller also filed an injunction application with the Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court, asking the court to order Jiedian and others to stop the alleged infringement first.
In response to the lawsuit of the caller, Street Electric filed a request for patent invalidation on 7 patents of the caller, and the original Patent Reexamination Board made a review decision after the trial, of which 5 patents were claims of infringement that were declared invalid, 1 patent was claims of infringement that were declared partially invalid, and the other 1 patent was found not to be creative by the court in the administrative litigation of invalidation, and the original Patent Reexamination Board was ordered to make a new review decision.
In addition, Jiedian believes that Caller has filed 30 patent infringement lawsuits with the Beijing Intellectual Property Court and the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court (hereinafter referred to as the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court) on the basis of the same 6 patents. These 30 cases have the same parties; and the rights basis on which these 30 lawsuits are based are all the same 6 patents. In particular, the alleged infringing products involved in the 24 cases filed in the Shenzhen Intermediate Court are all the same type of cabinet products of Jiedian, which belong to the same litigation object. Jiedian believes that this is a typical duplicate lawsuit. Caller believes that it is not a duplicate lawsuit. At the same time, Jiedian believes that Caller is also suspected of spreading misinformation and misleading information, which is an act of unfair competition.
After the trial, the Shenzhen Intermediate Court ruled that Street Electricity’s lawsuit was established, requiring the caller to immediately stop the unfair competition, publicly apologize to Street Electricity on its official website, WeChat official account and more than ten media for the unfair competition, eliminate the negative impact, and compensate Street Electricity for economic losses and reasonable expenses of 5 million yuan. At present, the case is in the process of 2nd-round Moderation.
Regarding these patent disputes, Liu Tongxin believes: "The purpose of enterprises to carry out patent layout should be to build their own protective’armor ‘, rather than maliciously attack others."
"The market competition in the shared power bank industry should not be a zero-sum game, and the relationship between enterprises should be mutual promotion and common progress." Liu Tongxin said that at present, there is still a lot of room for innovation in the shared power bank industry in our country, and the shared power bank enterprises should focus on technological innovation, provide users with better services and create higher value. Only in this way can the entire industry develop better. (Intellectual Property News, Andy)
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