[Seeing Future Technologies Through Patents] What Technologies Are Buying?

’s Intellectual Property’s (IP) strategy is to purchase patents aggressively. purchased 4379 patents in last 10 years, which is about half of what currently possesses (~8000).

According to IPnomics’ paper ‘What blue ocean strategy is preparing’ that is co-released by ETRC and Patentpia (Representative Kang Min Soo), purchased 4030 patents in last 3 years, which is about 90% of what it purchased in last 10 years.

An area that purchased most patents is network, and it secured 280 patents in last 10 years. Most of the patents are related to user’s data processing and mobile communication.

In 2007 when Android was made to public, primary focused on purchasing patents in mobile field such as wireless network and Wi-Fi 26. purchased most of the patents from Motorola (bought in 2011) and IBM. It put forth an efficient strategy by keeping main patents after selling Motorola to Lenovo in 2014.

purchased 896 patents in 2014 alone, and patents regarding display were the most (200). Areas such as Artificial Intelligence (regarding Smart Home, remote control, etc), information security, and Smart Cars are areas where purchase of their patents increased dramatically.

There are a lot of interests on ‘Patent Marketplace’ that introduced on the 8th. This is a strategy where patents that are dealt in this marketplace can strengthen IP portfolio and raise its technology completeness.

According to collator “Will buy my patent?” (www.ipnomics.co.kr/?p=12009) that IPnomics provided, is mostly interested in mobile communication patents that MS, IBM, HP, Apple, and Samsung Electronics possess. Although there is not much possibility that these enterprises will sell their parents to , one can focus on the fact that they are related technologically with future business that is aiming.

According to collator’s search result, is recently showing a lot of interest on Memjet Technology. Memjet is a startup that possesses super high speed color printing technique. Memjet’s patent is a color ink application technique that can be applied on displays and small cameras with wearable devices. Wearable device field such as Glasses is a field that is focusing on and its percentage of purchase in last 3 years is 100%. 

collator analyzes ’s 15,000 patents’ citation relationship and prior technology relationship and distinguishes similarity and influence between patents. 



patent collator is provided for free on IPnomics homepage (www.ipnomics.co.kr).



Staff Reporter Lim, Geetaek | [email protected]