2018-01-26　人氣：3165[Taiwan USA patent filing] ITRI helps Matsutek to win the patent war and retain the market of robotic vacuum cleaner by stricking back against iRobot

(＊＊＊Taiwn patent)

 ITRI helps Matsutek to win the patent war and retain the market of robotic vacuum cleaner by stricking back against iRobot

Taiwan has theatrically won a patent commercial war! Being ranked number 2 worldwide in the industry of robotic vacuum cleaner, the Taiwanese company Matsutek Co. LTD., briefly referred to as Matsutek below, has been sued last April because of patent infringement by its opponent iRobot, the American company of the United States. Since iRobot was very aggressive that there was not any chance for Matsutek to escape passively, Matsutek asked the Industrial Technology Research Institute of Taiwan, R.O.C., briefly referred to as ITRI below, for help. With the help of ITRI who proposed attacking in place of passively defending and found out the weakness of the opponent, iRobot was forced to settle for a draw and agreed to withdraw the lawsuit this month after Matsutek struck back by suing iRobot over 4 patent infringements regarding sensing positioning technology. Finally the dramatic win in this commercial war thanks to this collaboration between ITRI, an institution of government and Matsutek, a private company, Matsutek succeeded to retain the current market.

The success of this war has allowed Matsutek to not only retain the current market but also become one of the only two suppliers of robotic vacuum cleaner in the United States. Peng Yu WANG, the general director of Technology Transfer and Law Center of ITRI, pointed that located in the Tucheng industrial area, Matsutek produces robotic vacuum cleaner of which most of the components are supplied by local firms such that “the win of this war helps one manufacturer, and furthermore saves the whole supply chain.”

Being globally the largest company of robotic vacuum cleaner, iRobot last April filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court District of Massachusetts where located its headquarters and the United States International Trade Commission over patent infringements committed by several competitors in the same industry of robotic vacuum cleaner, including Matsutek which pursuing after iRobot was the second largest one. If the juristic determination was in favor of iRobot, the robotic vacuum cleaners made by Matsutek would not be able to import into the United States, and in that situation Matsutek would be like being condemned to death.

Since the situation made Cheng Xiang YAN, the chairman of Matsutek, feel scared, he decided to ask for help from ITRI who sold patents to Matsutek. Peng Yu WANG specified that ITRI owns approximately 20,000 patents, which means that “ITRI’s patent database is like a well-armed ammunition depot”. After two months in patent search filtering, ITRI selected 4 patents which can be “very good weapons” for Matsutek to use in the patent war to threaten iRobot. All the patents that ITRI selected concern ITRI’s leading technologies, including “sensing positioning”, “detector” that are often used in the robotic vacuum cleaner.

The strategy that Matsutek collaborated with ITRI forced effectively iRobot to begin the negotiation with Matsutek. Moreover, ITRI selected then 10 more patents that could be useful for the robotic vacuum cleaners, and thus allowed Matsutek to be able to stress iRobot during the negotiation by stating that if iRobot continued to insist on, Matsutek would buy all these ITRI patents, and then would also sue iRobot for patent infringements. With all the attacks as such, iRobot was not able to do anything but waving a white flag. At the end, Matsutek and iRobot achieved conciliation, and iRobot agreed to withdraw the lawsuit so as to allow Matsutek to retain its ranked number 2 position in the current market.

Yu-Shu Wang. (2018, January 26). China Times, pp. A6.