Samsung Research Institute-Bangalore: Building an Army of Millennial & Gen Z Patent Filers

SRI-B, Samsung’s largest R&D centre outside Korea, has filed more than 7,500 patents globally and 3,500 in India so far. Nearly 50% of these patent filers are first-time inventors and about 27% have less than five years of experience. SRI-B has successfully trained and built an army of Millennial & Gen Z patent filers who are always brimming with new ideas to file patents for.

With a strong R&D focus to develop meaningful innovations for India and the world, Samsung is the leader in filing patents in India. Owing to the patent filing culture, Samsung Research Institute – Bangalore (SRI-B) has seen a 100% increase in annual patent filings over the last four years.

The commercialization of patents filed by Samsung has increased by four times in last 3 years that means these innovations are ultimately offered in Samsung products. The majority of patents filed are in emerging areas such as 5G, AI, ML, IoT, camera & vision technologies.

“For patents, we work with business teams, do our research and come up with unique consumer needs in the design team. Then we collaborate with engineering teams to see which ideas make the cut. It is a journey full of fun and learning,” said Swadha Jaiswal, Design Manager at SRI-B. Swadha has been with Samsung for seven years and has filed ten patents so far.

SRI-B also has a specialized IP team that conducts invention-creation training, advanced inventive step training to help employees understand the idea and process of innovation. Most of the patents have been filed by the young millennials and Gen Z who have just entered the workforce.

“At Samsung, freshers are trained on the patenting process by the IP (intellectual property) team, the engineering team, and others. Teams guide them on what the broad customer needs are and the areas they need to focus on,” said Payal Anand, Chief Engineer, Machine Learning at SRI-B. Payal has been with Samsung for 7 years and has filed 3 patents.

Samsung strongly believes in nurturing young talent and has built a strong culture of innovation and patent filing. To simplify the process for the inventors, SRI-B has also set up an internal portal. This portal is a one-stop-shop for all patent filing information that an engineer requires during the process.

“At Samsung, we believe in meaningful innovation and encourage our engineers to bring their novel ideas, techniques to develop new-age solutions to problems. We are immensely proud of our young millennials and Gen Z employees who have contributed significantly and have filed for patents at such an early stage of their careers. We will continue to work towards creating an environment that inspires, supports and develops young innovators,” said Dr Aloknath De, CTO, SRI-B.

In order to strengthen Industry-Academia partnership, Samsung R&D has been working with young innovators across top engineering colleges as part of a popular students’ engagement program named Samsung PRISM. Among the successes over the last two years of the program is many students getting to file joint patents with SRI-B engineers. Earlier this year, Samsung also set up a world-class artificial intelligence, machine learning and data engineering lab at the KLE Technological University to offer young students an exciting opportunity to research in emerging cutting-edge tech areas.