During the twenty years of work relating to intellectual property I have been entrusted with at companies and patent offices, there is something that has always made an impression on me – the work that different experts (with professional ability) perform in an hour often differ in effectiveness, in the improvement in corporate competitiveness that results, by an order of magnitude. Why do such differences exist?
Usually, when we think about something, or when we are faced with a problem, we think carefully about “what to do” or “how to do it.” This may be the way of thinking that makes experts who they are. However, the results obtained from considering “what” and “how” do not greatly exceed the scale of the problem characterized in this way. In order to exceed that scale, it is necessary to always go back to and think about “why this should be done.” This means that, while it is the mission of experts to thoroughly consider everything in an invention down to the details, it is also necessary for them to search for a reason why a intellectual property right should be acquired, a reason closely linked to “enabling victory over business competitors.”
From this standpoint, the world’s intellectual property rights can be classified into two general types.
[Type A] (that starts from “what/how”)
Step 1:
Use expertise in the field to acquire as broad rights as possible from the inventor’s idea.
Step 2:
Think of ways to use the acquired rights.
[Type B] (that starts from “why”)
Step 1:
Consider a situation in which rights are utilized to defeat a competitor.
Step 2:
Consider what inventions are necessary to realize this utilization.
It cannot be said that either the Type A approach or the Type B approach is absolutely better. However, in order to win economically over rival companies, efforts with the current focus on “what/how”, to increase expertise only, are not enough. We had better ask why we should be working on the case before us. The focus should be on “why”; that will yield the necessary results that exceed the current usual scale of efforts. This is how U’sfi Patent Attorneys International Office considers a case.
