Integrating requirements analysis and design around strategy for designing around patents

In the era of knowledge economy, enterprises have set up patent barriers to protect their proprietary intellectual property. Therefore, it´s an important issue for the industrial circles to break the patent barriers. Design around patents is an effective method to avoid the patent infringement, which is in connection with the competitor´s patented product or technology. This paper presents an innovative design process which can combine the strategy and the requirement analysis. In order to reduce the design cost, shorten the development cycle and lower the risk of patent infringement, we try a systematic way which blends the needs analysis into the law of patent infringement, in using the TRIZ theory; we can achieve the original design to aim at the method and patented technology. Finally, we take the avoid powder washing machine for example to express the process of design around.