[Mastering the IP Portfolio, by Taeyoung Lee] ③ Building a Portfolio: Gillette's Excessive(?) Efforts

This is the third column in the "Mastering the IP Portfolio" series by our patent attorney Taeyoung Lee, published on June 5, 2020 in IP Daily, a media outlet specializing in intellectual property.

Using the Gillette ProGlide FlexBall razor as an example, this column presents a strategy for the detailed review involved in building an IP portfolio.

[Mastering the IP Portfolio, by Taeyoung Lee] ③ Building a Portfolio: Gillette's Excessive(?) Efforts

Gillette, the dominant company in the wet-shave razor market, is famous for its strategy of securing strong, net-like patent portfolios around its products to keep competitors out of the market. For each product it launches, such as the Mach3, Fusion and Fusion ProGlide, it builds a portfolio not of one or two patents but of dozens, to prevent competitors from copying it in the first place.

Against this backdrop, in 2014 Gillette launched the Fusion ProGlide FlexBall, which added FlexBall Technology to the Fusion ProGlide. Apart from the FlexBall technology, the Fusion ProGlide FlexBall is substantially the same as the existing Fusion ProGlide.

In launching the Fusion ProGlide FlexBall, Gillette carried out a first-round review of which aspects of the "FlexBall technology" could be protected by IP rights, in the order of ① the technology name and product specs, ② the package specs, and ③ the shaving performance testing device.

After this first-round review for IP protection, a second-round review can be conducted for each individual item to build a strong IP portfolio using multiple patents and designs. In the second-round review, one approach is to list each of the components making up the FlexBall technology and then seek patent and design protection for different combinations of those components.

In this column, I present the IP portfolio that Gillette ultimately secured. The final portfolio indirectly reveals the strategy used in the second-round review.

① Trademark rights for the technology name

As shown in the table below, Gillette obtained trademark rights in the United States and Korea with razors and other products as designated goods. Being a global company, Gillette of course secured trademark rights worldwide. "FLEXBALL" appears to be used as a product name or as a phrase describing the core technology (a USP phrase).

Likewise, even if a phrase is not the product name, it is worth considering trademark protection for phrases that relate to the product's core features and will be used on its packaging.

② Core structure of the FlexBall technology (pod + elastic member + left and right pivot shafts)

The figure below shows the patents and design rights Gillette secured for the core structure of the FlexBall technology. The essence of the FlexBall technology is that a pod coupled to one end of the handle is mounted so as to rotate left and right, allowing the cartridge to pivot left and right relative to the handle.

(For the full column, please click the link below.)

LNB IP Law Firm