Patent analysis of LED plant lighting field

In recent years, with the improvement of LED light efficiency and other performances, the application of LED light sources in facility agricultural production has become more and more common, forming a craze]. As a symbol of technological innovation and change, patent information has direct and real-time witness significance, and has become an important indicator for guiding the development of modern industrial and social technology, and can reflect the latest developments in the level of scientific and technological development.

Through the development and analysis of patent information resources, people can grasp the information of invalid patents in time, find existing solutions to technical problems, use patented technology for free, and study alternative technologies to catch up with the latest technology in this field. Technical assessments during licensing and technology transfer, avoiding possible infringement issues, tracking real and potential competitor activities, and identifying appropriate markets, showing that patent information plays an important role in the enterprise market competition.

Patent search database and analysis system

The search work is based on the DWPI (Derwent Word Patents Index) world patent index database of THOMSON and the national patent code database of the State Intellectual Property Office of the Guangdong Patent Information Service Platform. The National Intellectual Property Office's full-field coded patent database has been included since 1985. For all Chinese patent data since the year, DWPI includes patent documents from 41 countries, regions and organizations in the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea, and China. This article retrieved the patents in the field of LED plant lighting applied from January 1, 1985 to June 30, 2014, using the DWPI database of THOMSON to search using search expressions (due to the complexity of the retrieval method, this article is only a general explanation) The search method includes patents, including IPC classification, IPC classification, sovereignty items, application time range, etc., mainly from the lighting system type, application scope, technical methods, application purposes, etc., to express the keywords, including mining keywords, including : LED Chinese and English expressions and other popular sayings, such as: LEDs, photodiodes, LEDs, etc.; Key words of plant lighting, such as: By system type: lamp, lamp, light box, panel light, etc., press Applications: Plants, agriculture, biology, vegetables, etc.; According to technology: fill light, daylighting, light monitoring, etc.; According to the purpose: cultivation, cultivation, seedling, etc. The IPC classification number is first retrieved from the department to the major category, and then refined to the subclass for retrieval, and then removed from the group level. Finally, the searched data was manually filtered and obtained 1315 patents in the field of global LED plant lighting, including 419 Chinese patents. In view of the respective advantages of the two databases, the analysis of global patents in this paper uses the DWPI database, and the analysis of Chinese patents uses the Guangdong patent information service platform. Therefore, some data in the analysis process will be slightly different, but it does not affect the paper. scientific.

Analysis of patent status

This section analyzes the current status of LED patents in the field of plant lighting from the perspective of the number of patent applications with the year of application and the distribution in the world and in the country, in order to fully understand the status quo of patents in this application field.

Trends in the number of patent applications with the year of application

As can be seen from Figure 1, since the beginning of 2000, the number of patent applications for LED lighting in plants has begun to increase, but the growth rate in the early stage is slow. Since 2007, the number of patents in this direction has begun to grow at a rapid pace. In 2012, there were 264 peaks (in Figure 1, due to limited statistical time, the number of patents in 2014 will be less, so no special analysis will be conducted for that year). According to the survey, the global LED plant growth lamp output has started to grow at a high speed since 2013. Although the output value is only 10 million US dollars, it is expected to challenge 300 million US dollars in 2017. It is believed that due to the large demand of global agriculture, the application of LED in plant lighting will be more and more, and it will usher in a period of rapid development.

It can also be seen from Figure 1 that the number of patent applications in China in the field of LED plant lighting is very close to the global trend in the application year. China had fewer patent applications for LED plant lighting applications before 2007, basically less than 5 per year. Since 2007, it has increased rapidly year by year, and in 2012, the number of applications reached 113, accounting for about half of the global applications in 2012. It can be seen that as a large agricultural country, China's research in the field of LED plant lighting started early, and many research results.

Figure 1 Global and China (including Taiwan) LED plant lighting field patent application volume chart

The distribution of patent applications in the world and China is shown in Table 1. Among the 1,315 patents in the field of plant lighting, there are 419 Chinese patents (including 223 invention patents and 186 utility model patents). The first one accounted for 31.86% of the total; Japan applied for 247 patents, and the number of patents ranked second, accounting for 18.78% of the total; South Korea and the United States ranked third and fourth respectively (where WO For the world patent organization, EP is the European Patent Office, here is the classification of the Derwent database, so no special analysis is given. China is a big agricultural country and the market for LED plant lighting is very large. With the rapid development of the LED industry, the number of patent applications in the field of LED plant lighting in China has rapidly increased. Japan is one of the leading patent technology holders in the field of LED plant lighting. This is because Japan's LED technology is internationally leading and has a well-established LED industry chain. At the same time, Japan's biotechnology level is very high, so LED and In the field of application of biology, Japan has advantages that are unmatched by other countries or regions.

From the data on the right side of Table 1, we can see that China's patents in the application field of LED plant lighting are: Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Beijing, Anhui, etc. The top two applications in Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang Province are very close, with 55 and 54 respectively, accounting for more than one-fourth of the number of patent applications in China's LED plant lighting field. It can be seen that China's research in this field is mainly Distributed in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions, which is related to the strong local scientific research strength and economic strength.

Table 1 Number of patent applications in the field of LED plant lighting Top 10 countries and Chinese provinces/regions/regions

Applicant composition analysis compares the top ten patent holders in the world and China (see Table 2). It can be clearly seen that the top ten patent holders in the world are basically multinational companies, of which the top five Japanese companies occupy four seats. It shows the strength of research and investment in the field of LED plant lighting in Japan. These multinational companies have entered the field of LED plant lighting to make it easier and faster to market and benefit research results.

Table 2 Top 10 patent holders in the field of LED plant lighting

The patent holders of the top ten LED plant lighting application areas in China are characterized by the coexistence of enterprises, universities and scientific research units, and even the performance of universities and research institutes is more prominent. There is only one company among the top five (see Table 3). At the same time, the top ten patent holders in China have a maximum of 13 applications. This aspect shows that China's research in this field has not caused major concern of enterprises, and the research results of universities and research institutes are slow to convert. On the other hand, although the number of patent applications in LED plant lighting application field is large, it is scattered. There are no prominent research units or companies, and the competitive strength is weak. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the cooperation between industry and academia of research institutions and companies, so that patent technology can be transformed into social value as soon as possible.

Table 3 Top 10 Patent Holders in China in LED Plant Lighting

Technical Composition Analysis IPC: The International Patent Classification Number is an effective search tool for patent document retrieval in order to determine the novelty and creativity of a patent application (including evaluation of technological advancement and practical value). This section analyzes and compares the global and domestic IPC scenarios (IPC group categories) to understand the current global LED technology composition in plant lighting applications and the differences in China's technical focus in this field.

Among the global patent applications in LED plant lighting applications, the top 5 IPC technology categories are shown in Figure 2, respectively: 1) F21Y101 /02: Light-emitting devices or lighting systems involving miniature light sources, such as light-emitting diodes; 2) A01G9 /20: Use flowers to grow flowers, vegetables or rice in a hotbed; 3) A01G7 / 00: General botany; 4) F21S2 /00: Non-portable lighting devices or systems for modular structures; 5) A01G7 / 04: Treat plants with electricity or magnetism to promote their growth. (Note: The IPC code of the Derwent system is converted in line with the domestic one.)

In the patent application field of LED plant lighting applied for in China, the IPC classification is shown in Figure 3. The top five key application technology types are mainly concentrated in: 1) A01G9 /20: Using flowers to grow flowers, vegetables or rice in a hotbed; 2) A01G31 /02: Special equipment for hydroponic and soilless cultivation (except in Container or greenhouse cultivation equipment and automatic watering device); 3) A01G9 /02: Cultivation of flowers, vegetables or rice in containers; 4) A01H4 /00: Plant regeneration by tissue culture techniques; 5) A01G7 /06: Yes Treatment of growing trees or plants, such as preventing wood decay, coloring of flowers or wood, and extending the life of plants.

Figure 2 LED plant lighting field global application for the top 5 IPC

Figure 3 The top 5 IPCs in China for patent application in the field of plant lighting

From the above analysis, it can be seen that the patent applications for LED plant lighting applications at home and abroad are mainly concentrated on the cultivation and promotion of plants, as well as the preservation and preservation of plants and the regrowth of plants. The means used are mainly focused on the use of LED light-assisted hotbeds and the use of LEDs to make non-portable lighting devices, such as boxes and containers. As the impact of greenhouse applications on agriculture continues to increase, in some countries or regions where agricultural development or agricultural industries are large, plant cultivation and growth promotion will continue to be the main development trend.

Conclusion

This paper mainly analyzes the application of patents in LED plant lighting application fields at home and abroad. Using the combination of DWPI database and Guangdong patent information service platform, the number of patent applications varies with the year, the distribution of patent areas, and the distribution of major patent holders. The situation and the classification of the main technical patents in four aspects, from the global and domestic perspectives of analysis and comparison, came to the following conclusions:

1) From the trend of patent application volume with the year, the patent status of LED in the field of plant lighting application shows a rapid growth trend, and China's development pace is consistent with the global development.

2) From the perspective of the distribution of patent areas, first of all, China ranks first in the number of patent applications in this field on a global scale; secondly, China's main patent application areas are concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions.

3) From the distribution of major patent holders, the world's major patent holders are mainly concentrated in multinational companies, Japanese companies perform well, and patent holdings are numerous and concentrated. However, China's patents are distributed among enterprises, universities and research institutes, and universities and research institutes account for a higher proportion. At the same time, the number of patents applied for in China is large but scattered. It is necessary to increase cooperation between industry, universities and research institutes to facilitate the rapid translation of research results into industrial results.

4) From the analysis of IPC's technical composition, the domestic and international technical composition is mainly concentrated in the fields of F21Y101 /02, A01G9 /20, etc. The main research content is in the two aspects of plant cultivation and growth promotion, using LED light-assisted hotbed and utilization. LEDs make non-portable lighting devices, and China is consistent with research fields around the world.