In August 2019, the world's top technology accelerating incubator, Plug and Play (PNP), launched its’ first energy-themed startup camp in China. A total of seven innovative energy technology companies have won the competition and participated in the accelerating camp activities. As a strategic partner of PNP in China, the Bluetech Clean Air Alliance (BCAA) provided professional support for the patent strategy for the accelerating camp. Tonny Xie, Director of BCAA, also served as the instructor of the accelerating camp launched the “Technology Company Patent Strategy” special training for the enterprises.
In the energy and environmental protection industry, most of its’ clientele are government and large enterprises, sales are difficult to tackle, and technology companies often pay less attention to patent work.
Director Xie mentioned that China is the world's largest clean technology market. For example, in the clean air market , there will be more than 20 trillion market opportunities in 2030. Attracted by these market opportunities, China's patents in the environmental field have been significantly ahead of other countries. However, the number of high-value core patents is very limited, the overseas distribution of patents is extremely low, and technology companies have a large risk of loss of rights.
In the course of this training, Mr. Xie mentioned the following questions and contents. Why cultivate high-value patents? What major mistakes does the company have in the patent application process? How to carryout high-value patent mining and layout? How should technology companies build an intellectual property management system? How to manage intellectual property risks in the process of mergers, acquisitions, investment and financing. The systematictraining for the camp was carried out inclusive of studying relevant cases.
Since 2017, the BCAA has launched high-value patent cultivation in the field of clean technology. On the one hand, this program been tackled by establishing several high-value patent training pilots which have advocated for technology company systems to build a patent strategy, including the mining and layout of high-value patents.On the other hand, there has been a focus on increasing awareness by clean technology investment funds, incubators, scientific research institutions, andother organizations. The program assists them in carrying out training, working to help relevant personnel to establish the correct patent awareness, and guides enterprises to carry out effective patent mining and protection work. The cooperation with PNP is the fifth patent training activity carried out by BCAA this year.
PNP is a global high-tech investment incubator, member of Amidi Group, which is dedicated to helping entrepreneurial teams grow rapidly. It is also one of the earliest incubators in the world. Since 1998, PNP has cumulatively invested in more than 2,000 start-ups, including the emergence of PayPal, Google, LendingClub, Dropbox, Logitech, and other star companies with a market capitalization exceeding US$10 billion.
