U.S. vs "Japanese" Styles

In contrast to the U.S. practice of filing a relatively small number of patent applications on a core technology, the typical Japanese practice is to file many applications for minor variations or improvements. The Japanese approach is commonly (and perhaps a bit derisively) referred to as "flooding" . Actually, the Japanese strategy makes perfect sense for a competitor that did not invent the core technology. By filing dozens or even hundreds of patents, the competitor is able to force the inventor of the core technology into cross-licensing, which in this case means exchanging rights to minimally inventive improvements for rights to the core technology.

The strategy also makes good sense when a company is trying to lock up a marketplace for a core technology that is already in the public domain. For example, although many different types of flying toys are known (balsa wood and plastic airplanes, flying tubes, darts, etc), a company wishing to dominate the market for flying toys can implement a strategy of claiming flying toys that include materials having certain desirable characteristics, or that have a given weighting, or that fly a given distance. The strategy would require a fairly sizable number of claims, but at the end of the day the company would very likely control the market.

It is also important to appreciate that flooding can be accomplished without filing quite so many applications. The basic principle is to create a field of land mines all around a given core technology, and that can be done with a relatively few patent applications so long as they have really well thought out claims. The trick is to figure out what sets of characteristics future products will likely have, and then claim those combinations now.