The classical business model in the lighting industry was for a long time to sell LED lights and other luminants at a retailer. This has changed with the development of new business models, where products are leased but bought. The new type of business models has already transformed industries like music and video, which most of us experienced firsthand, but also more traditional industries and BtoB companies are adapting. One example in the lighting business is Signify, the former lighting branch of Philips. Signify drives this idea to the extremes by not only developing new business models and patenting them for themselves but setting up a specific licensing program to license out their developments.

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Signify, former Philips lighting, started already in 2008 the licensing program EnabLED. Here, over 490 Signify inventions covered by around 3650 patents are offered to the participants of the licensing program, so that they can develop new and innovative products at higher speed. This helps the licensee to reduce their time to market and helps the licensor by increasing the overall market size of the eco-system, which they dominate. So, Signify is playing the role of an eco-system orchestrator, who supports the growth of the other smaller eco-system companies to increase its own revenue in the long term, and supports these activities with a clear IP strategy.

But, Signify itself also offers solutions for many application areas such as the smart office with its many use cases. Here are the Signify solutions within the business eco-system of smart office:

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Here are Signify use cases for smart city:

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Here are the uses cases for store lighting and smart retail:

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Here are the use cases for smart warehouse and manufacturing:

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Here are the use cases of interact hospitality:

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Questions of the case study:

1 – Please identify and describe a use case from the relevant application area city, retail, industry and hospitality.

2 – Please identify two patents from the Philips Signify portfolio that contribute to the generation of exclusiveness of this use case and the associated value creation. Please justify why the patents are suitable for protecting the use case and/or how they ensure value creation.

3 – Please develop and briefly describe an idea for another use case in the application field that is not specified in the information provided by Signify. Please develop and describe how this additional use case could be protected by IP (including non-technical IP rights). 2-3 briefly presented ideas are sufficient for this.

 

Here are the solutions of group 1:

  • Anahita AHOURAEI
  • Audrey BASTARD
  • Maria Daniela BOTTICELLI
  • Valentine FAVROD
  • Alexander GANGNUS
  • Ivan GAUCI
  • Jan GLUECKERT

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Here are the solutions of group 2:

  • Nataliya HIRSKA
  • Tobias LIPP
  • Pierre LORIN
  • Aurélie MESSIER
  • Matthieu NORRANT
  • Rudina Ann PESCANTE

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Here are the solutions of group 3:

  • Nicolas RENAUD
  • Adrien RENOULT
  • Martin REYNARD
  • Ricardo RODRIGUEZ CORTASA
  • Vijay SHELKE
  • Christian SLISSE

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Here are the solutions of group 4:

  • Erica SMITH
  • Russell THOM
  • Rodrigo TRONCOSO
  • Christine WALMSLEY-SCOTT
  • Astrid WOOLLARD
  • Xiaoqing ZHANG

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The Signify Industry Use Case about development, patenting and licensing of use cases with solutions from 2021 master class in IP law and management is available at the Centre d’Etudes Internationales de la Propriété Intellectuelle – CEIPI. When you want to learn more, follow us at IP Business Academy  #digitaltransformation