| Summary: | 碩士 === 明新科技大學 === 管理研究所碩士在職專班 === 106 === As the functions of the digital consumer products has been improving every day, storage
media has taken an indispensable part when it comes to designing of many consumer digital
products. Many of them would be inoperable if it lacks of memory IC.
Benefits from the consistent growth of the NAND Flash memory capacity on the smart
phone, and actively import of the solid state drive (SSD) on PC, server and data center, the
demand for the key component NAND Flash memory has been growing beyond imagination.
Manufacturers spends lots of their capitals not only to expand factories and acquire related
business but develop products that have higher capacity, even faster read-write speed and
lower cost.
With the process technology of the NAND Flash memory has come to under-10nm
level, the process also has come from 32, 64 layers to 72 even 96 layers, the architecture
stepped in to TCL and creative 3D NAND structure to make the cost even lower but more
application. Therefore, bottlenecks and challenges will lie ahead when designing and
manufacturing 3D NAND Flash memory. With great industrial development, it also comes
with tremendous competition. Manufacturers should bear in mind that developing key
technology and avoid patent conflict is important but avoiding patent mine field is even more
important.
In view of this, this thesis paper uses patent analysis, through M-Trends patent analysis
platform to further analyze 3D NAND Flash memory industry patent trend. The result shows
that during the period from 1977 to 2018, there were 2,769 patent right applications, the
number significantly grows in 2005, but it’s most blooming from 2009 to 2015. However, the
number of patent rights applications dropped drastically in 2017, whether it’s due to
technological bottleneck or developments in other areas, is still in debate and needs
researchers to further follow up. In addition to search results, we can see Taiwan has made it
to the Top 5 patent development countries, but the patents are concentrated on specific
manufacturers, vendors and inventor individuals after further cross-check among patent right
holders, inventors and companies, which may results in the lower R&D investment energy
compare to other countries. The above can be included in future directions on further studies.
Keywords：3D NAND flash memory、Non-Volatile memory、Patent analysis.
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