BianKai Ai, Jing Liu

Patent Examination Cooperation Center of Patent Office, SIPO, China

Introduction

The liquid laundry is a kind of laundry detergent developed in the 1950s in the United States.[1]Due to worse detergency and higher cost comparing to washing powder, early liquid laundry products showed a poor sales. However, in the 1980s, the laundry liquid ushered in the period of rapid development with the phosphorus disabled in washing powder in the 1970s in the United States and other Western countries. As of 2010, the liquid laundry share in detergent market, the United States was 83%, Western and Central Europe was 47%, and Japan was 60%.[2]

In China, the laundry liquid was developed in 1980s.[2]However, its production in 2011 has been more than washing powder and a growth strong momentum occurs.[3]According to “Consumption behavior survey report on the clothing washing products” released by Nanfang Daily in July 2015,79.16% of consumers make the liquid laundry as the first choice for detergent laundry.

In terms of technical development, as mentionedabove, development of the United States is the earliest,Europe and Japan subsequently, while China is only in the 1980s before the liquid laundry products appears.Therefore, the master and the accumulation of the core technology, and the optimization and upgrading of the products are still on a stern situation.

In recent years, with the massive growth volume of sales of liquid laundry in China, the market in the field of the liquid laundry is big, but the competition is intense. The domestic large-scale detergent companies are stepping up research and development, gradually pay attention to the protection of intellectual property rights.But compared to foreign companies, in addition to the number, the technology development and intellectual property rights protection still exists a certain gap.

This paper analyzed the patent application number and trend, the patent protection strategy of the important applicant and the technology evolution route in the field of liquid laundry, both in China and abroad, thus,providing reference for liquid laundry field technical personnel.

Retrieval database and policy description

Retrieve by use of the CNPAT system of the State Intellectual Property Office of the P.R.C, chose the“l(fā)aundry”, “wash”, “weave” and “clothing” etc. as the keywords, and simultaneously, according to the international patent classification C11D, and carried out the artificial screening for the retrieval results, then, as of March 10, 2016,got 1,211 liquid laundry related patent applications as a basis for the analysis of the patent related information.

In addition, in the absence of a request to disclosure the patent in advance, the applications publication occurs 18 months after the filing date, and utility model and design usually are disclosed after 4～6 months since the filing date.In China, most domestic applications require disclosing in advance, while foreign applications do not require disclosing in advance. Therefore, the data from October 2013 to retrieval deadline will be biased.

Analysis on patent application and protection

Figure 1. Analysis on the patent application and protection in the field of liquid laundry

Figure 1 shows annual distribution of patent applications of Chinese and foreign applicants in the field of liquid laundry in China since the implementation of China’s patent system. From Figure 1, it can be seen, as early as 1994, the foreign applicants had more amount of liquid laundry patent application discloses, and can also be said that in the early 1990s, foreign applicants began liquid laundry technology patent layout in China, application volume reached the high peak in 1997. In 1998, the amount of application fell, and it has granted 40 patents per year.The number of liquid laundry patent applications filed by domestic applicants tended to zero before 2005, in 2005,it had an explosive growth, then between 2006 and 2010 granted about 20 patents per year, and after 2010, it has a sustained and high explosive growth.

Trends in annual liquid laundry patent applications are closely related to the development of technology and market.From the mid–1980s to mid–1990s, the liquid laundry formula changed from no additives to contain additives, also the efficiency of the liquid laundry was greatly enhanced,Meanwhile, the liquid laundry sales in Europe and the United States market also entered the phase of rapid development.Therefore, during this period, most in the field of liquid laundry were foreign applicants.[1]

In China, the development of liquid laundry is relatively late. In 1995, Lonkey launched the first domestic liquid laundry detergent, after that Kaimi and White Cat also launched their own liquid laundry detergent. In addition, due to the China’s patent system is implemented relatively late, and the enterprises did not pay enough attention to intellectual property rights, the patent application publication lags. Until 2005, the domestic patent application of liquid laundry has grown by leaps and bounds. However, the sales of liquid laundry has increased rapidly since 2009.[3]Therefore, after 2010, the number of patent application related to liquid laundry increased linearly.

Analysis on important applicants

Figure 2. Important applicants in China

Figure 2 shows the number of liquid laundry patent applications and the corresponding authorized patent of top 10 applicants, since the implementation of the patent system in China to the deadline of search. As shown in Figure 2, the patent application volume in the field of liquid laundry ranked in the first, second and fourth place is foreign applicants. In the top 10 applicants, there are three enterprises in Qingdao, two enterprises in Beijing, and the other is Changzhou Effect Information Service Corporation. The top 6 applicants are from Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Shanghai Soap, Kao Corporation, Beijing Green Umbrella, and Beijing Luowa, the rest of 4 enterprises have basically no authorized patents.

In order to further explore the relationship between patent protection and production & sales, the author further investigated the relationship between the operating business and liquid laundry about the aforementioned 10 companies. It was found that liquid laundry sales of three foreign applicants Procter & Gamble, Unilever Holland, Kao Corporation were in the leading positions in China, whose brands were wellknown as Persil (Procter & Gamble), Tide (Procter & Gamble),Omo (Unilever Holland) and Attack (Kao Corporation), and Shanghai soap, Beijing Green Umbrella and Beijing Luowa also had corresponding products. According to a network statistics in November 2014, the sales of Beijing Green Umbrella and Beijing Luowa ranked 15 and 17 in all liquid laundry production enterprises. The network data statistics showed that sales volume in the top 10 of the domestic brands of liquid laundry also included Blue Moon (Hongkong Blue Moon Company), Walch and Wei Xin (Valle (Guangzhou)Daily Necessities Co., Ltd.), Liby and Good Father (Liby Group), Super (Nice Group), and Wonderful Housekeeper(Taiwan’s enterprise). Additionally, Lonkey and Kaimi, which have earlier development in liquid laundry field, ranked 11 and 18 respectively.

In order to further understand the situation of the technology research and patent protection of the above mentioned production enterprises, the author checked and analyzed the patent application and protection status of the enterprises. The results showed that Blue Moon Company, Valle (Guangzhou) Daily Necessities Co., Ltd.,Liby Group, Nice Group all had a relatively large volume of applications, paying more attention to the protection of appearance design, and among the patents, the appearance design patents accounted for the vast majority, the utility model patents were the second, and the invention patents were very little. Wonderful Housekeeper only had 1 utility model patent and 9 appearance design patents. In comparison, Lonkey has a all-around patent protection,comprising quantities of the appearance design, the utility model and the invention patents. Kaimi pays more attention to entity technology research and protection, its patents are all invention patents, and most of patents are in the states of authorization maintenance.

Figure 3. Important patent protection theme of foreign applicants in the field of liquid laundry in China

It can be seen that China liquid laundry manufacturers not only pay attention to the marketing strategy, but also pay attention to technology research and protection.Generally speaking, domestic enterprises focus more on marketing strategy and the appearance of the packaging.

Patent protection themes and strategies

As it is known to all, the patent strategy is one of the main aspects of enterprise competition strategy. In the development process of technology, with the emergence of disruptive technology, alternative technologies and improved technologies, it will often have a focus on the emergence of patents.

In order to better understand the development trend and route of China and foreign countries in the field of liquid laundry, through comprehensively evaluating the patent protection subject type and scope, citation number, number of patent families, importance and legal status of the patent right, and other factors, it selected the representative key patents submitted in the recent 20 years in China, which related to three major improvements, comprising low foam,concentrated type and green environmental protection.Among the patents submitted by foreign applicants, which technical topics were relatively clear, so the technical roadmap was drawn. For the patents submitted by domestic applicants, because of the huge amount, and basically being the composition inventions, so only the approximate distribution of functional and subject types were given.

Figure 4. Distribution of the domestic application type

Figure 4 shows that the improvement of liquid laundry technology for domestic applicants is different to foreign applications, mainly focusing on the composition of the compounds, accounted for more than 90% of the total applications. For the improvement of surfactant and important additives is less, relative patents mainly are hold by Lonkey and Liby which are industrial entity applicants.

In addition, it is noted that, in foreign applications,surfactants, enzymes, antibacterial, sterilization, chelating agent and other additives are included, and that in domestic applications, in addition to the conventional components of foreign recognition. More applications will use the components of the plant like petals, drug ingredients like Sapindus, natural plants like Lavender, plant extracts like Dan phenol with main purpose of being antibacterial, bactericidal and improving the smell, and the improvement of the washing effect is rarely recorded, even if there are records show that the majority of the validation data is not sufficient.

Comparison of patent strategies

For the protection of the technology, in addition to the types and themes of patent protection, the writing of application documents is also essential. The Patent Law Article 59 stipulates “The protection scope of the patent right for invention or utility model shall be determined by the terms of the claims. The description and appended drawings may be used to interpret the content of the claims.” In the judgement of infringement, all of the technical features included in claims will limit the protection scope of the patent right. In other words, more and more special technical features are included in a claim, and more smaller protection scope has the claim.

Comparison of the writing style of right request

As described above, the foreign applicant’s patent applications in China are mostly based on the surfactants and other additives for the protection of the core components. About their writing style, the claims tend to be highly summarized, which the core components are prominent parts and minor components are simplified or omitted, and specification has a more detailed view of the results of the experimental data, and the domestic application is the opposite.

On the protection of the theme, a claim which has a theme of a single functional preparation usually should have greater protection scope than that which has a theme of a composition. The reason is that, for example, the invention relates to a technique for a surfactant, if the theme of the patent protection is a kind of surfactant, generally speaking, as long as products containing the surfactant fall into the scope of patent protection, and if the technology including the surfactant is written in a composition containing not only the surfactant, but also a variety of other ingredients, usually, only if the accused infringing product contains all the components required by the patent claim, it will constitute an infringement. Below, it will be explained in two cases, Case 1 for Procter & Gamble patent application, Case 2 for domestic patent application.

Claim 1 of Case 1: a liquid laundry detergent composition comprising (a) at least one detergent ingredient selected from the group consisting of anionic surfactants, zwitterionic surfactants, amphoteric surfactants, and mixtures thereof; (b) a coacervate phase forming cationic polymer;(c) one or more fabric care ingredients selected from the group consisting of (c1) one or more cationic silicone polymers comprising one or more polysiloxane units and one or more nitrogen moieties; (c2) one or more amino silicone polymers; (c3) one or more nitrogen-free silicone polymers;and (c4) mixtures thereof; and (d) a liquid carrier.

Claim 1 of Case 2: A low-foaming water-saving laundry detergent comprises 6wt.%～10wt.% sodium silicate, 3wt.%～9wt.% dodecylbetaine, 4wt.%～9wt.%fatty alcohol ethoxylate, 6wt.%～8wt.% sodium silicate,4wt.%～6wt.% plant carbon particles, 3wt.%～6wt.%alkyl polyglycoside, 1wt.%～3wt.% soap, 2wt.%～6wt. %honeysuckle, 3wt.%～5wt.% saffron, 6wt.%～8wt.% acrylic acid-maleic anhydride copolymer salt, 3wt.%～9wt.%sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, 2wt.%～6wt.% zeolite, and 1wt.%～4wt.% sodium lauryl sulfate.

In Case 1, the key point of the invention lies in the nursing component (c), and in Claim 1, three components were highly summarized in the form of (c1), (c2), and (c3),wherein component (c1) covered all cationic siloxane polymers containing one or more polysiloxane units and nitrogen, component (c2) covered all amino silicone polymers, and component (c3) covered all of the nitrogen free silicone polymers.

By contrast, in Case 2, almost all of the material and the amount used were special limited. In Case 1, if the applicant found a gold mine, he surrounded the whole mountain where the mine lied in by the patent. In Case 2, if the similar gold mine was found, it was just a fence which was built in the hole of the gold mine, and thus others could easily bypass.

Comparison of the writing style of patent specification

Also in the aforementioned two applications as an example, in the specification of Case 1, five examples were included, and for each example, raw materials and methods and procedures were illustrated in detail, in addition, detailed performance test conditions and test results were also listed.

In Case 2, six examples were included in the specification,and for each example, only raw materials and methods and procedures were explained without any performance test conditions and test results.

Through providing suitable experimental data in specification, it can have a favorable support on the protection scope of the claims. Especially in the patent examination right stage, the concrete implementation method and the experimental data in the specification are the main basis for patent examiner to judge whether the claims can be supported by the specification.

In addition, comparison with the prior art is also an important basis for confirming whether the invention has the beneficial or unexpected technical effect. Therefore,the arrangement of examples and recordation of the experimental data will determine if the rights can achieved,and the final size of the claims to be gained.

Conclusion

In summary, in China, along with the changing of the people’s demand for laundry detergent products,the liquid laundry also gradually is paid attention, and its sales began to increase. At the same time, a number of domestic enterprises have made great achievement both in the market marketing strategy and technology development.

However, compared to foreign enterprises, domestic enterprises had more appearance design applications than invention applications and the subjects of the invention application thereof, except for individual large companies,are compositions in the majority. Additionally, for writing style, the summary of independent claims is insufficient and the effective experimental data recorded in the specification is not enough detailed and comprehensive. Thus, in the field of the liquid laundry, the research and protect of technology are urgently need to be enhanced, and at the same time, the extraction of the core of the invention point and the writing level of the patent application documents also need to be improved.

[1] Zhenming Qiu; et al. Current Formula Situation and Trend of Liquid Laundry Detergent. Detergent & Cosmetics 2010,33(5), 15-19.

[2] Xianglong Zheng; et al. Liquid Laundry Market and Technology Development at Home and Abroad. Detergent &Cosmetics 2010, 33(5), 42-44.

[3] Liying Wu. Prospect and Challenge of Domestic Liquid Detergent Market. Detergent & Cosmetics 2014, 37(2), 6-10.