(By Observer Net, Lv Dong, Editor Zhang Guangkai)

"From the brand new HarmonyOS 6 operating system to the powerful Atlas 950 super node, our R&D team has achieved many breakthroughs. Although many leading software and hardware products are large-scale systems, we have done our best to open them up to everyone." On November 11, at the Huawei Sixth Innovation and Intellectual Property Forum, Fan Zhiyong, Vice President and Director of Intellectual Property Department of Huawei, said.

Currently, intellectual property protection is receiving increasing attention. Huawei holds an innovation and intellectual property forum almost every year, together with global experts in innovation and intellectual property, to jointly discuss the important significance of open and protected intellectual property for promoting technological innovation and driving social development.

Moreover, Huawei regularly announces the results of its "Top Ten Inventions" selection at this event. For example, this time's achievements involve super nodes, HarmonyOS, foldable screens, short-range optical interconnection, next-generation solid-state drives, assisted driving, Hongfeng original color imaging, and other fields.

Behind these cutting-edge achievements, there is no doubt that Huawei's intensive R&D investment plays a crucial role. Song Liuping, Chief Legal Officer of Huawei, disclosed that over the past five years, Huawei has continuously invested more than 20% of annual sales revenue into R&D. In 2024, Huawei's R&D expenditure exceeded 170 billion yuan, accounting for 20.8% of annual sales revenue. Over the past decade, Huawei has cumulatively invested over 1.2 trillion yuan in R&D.

According to the "2024 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard," Huawei's R&D spending ranks sixth globally.

Image source: Observer Net

However, from Huawei's perspective, high-intensity R&D is not about creating another "closed garden."

Fan Zhiyong stated that technical openness can significantly improve the efficiency of technology use and reduce the cost of technology use. Through software open sourcing, hardware opening, and public cloud services, millions of developers, partners, and customers around the world can use Huawei's technology to build their own software and hardware products.

The HarmonyOS and Euler operating systems, one targeting end consumers and the other serving infrastructure areas such as servers, are projects donated by Huawei to the OpenAtom Open Source Foundation, becoming the foundation for the interconnection of all things in the world, and also an important part of Huawei's open industry strategy.

Fan Zhiyong disclosed that in the past year, the OpenHarmony community had over 8,100 contributors, who submitted over 10 million lines of new open-source code. The cumulative installation volume of the openEuler system exceeded 10 million sets. Moreover, Huawei has launched a series of new software open-source and hardware open projects, such as CANN computing framework, Cangjie programming language, Lingqu bus hardware specifications, etc. "We are committed to providing all developer tools and application support code for terminals, cloud services, and computing systems."

Image source: Observer Net

As one of the largest patent-holding companies in the world, Huawei is also committed to promoting technological openness through patent applications, standard contributions, and academic papers. In 2024, Huawei publicly disclosed 37,000 new patents, setting a historical record; contributed over 10,000 new technical proposals to domestic and foreign standard organizations; and published over 1,000 new academic papers. As of the end of 2024, Huawei held over 150,000 valid authorized patents worldwide.

Moreover, Huawei is the enterprise that has obtained the most Chinese authorized patents so far, currently holding over 50,000 effective Chinese patents. It has obtained 29,000 authorized patents in the United States, and approximately 19,000 in Europe.

Fan Zhiyong stated that as Huawei's contributions in areas such as cellular communication, Wi-Fi, multimedia technology standards have been widely recognized by the industry, Huawei's patent licensing revenue has steadily increased, reaching a historical high of 630 million US dollars in 2024. As of last year, over 2.7 billion 5G devices had obtained Huawei's cellular communication standard patent license, over 1.2 billion consumer electronic devices had obtained Huawei's Wi-Fi patent license, and over 3.2 billion multimedia devices had obtained Huawei's multimedia video coding patent license.

This is the second time Huawei has publicly announced patent licensing revenue after two years. The previous time was at the 2023 Innovation and Intellectual Property Conference, when the 2022 patent licensing revenue was 560 million US dollars. If we consider the two previous public disclosures of 1400 million US dollars between 2015-2019 and 12-1300 million US dollars between 2019-2021, Huawei's total patent licensing revenue over the past ten years may have exceeded 4 billion US dollars.

In April 2022, Ren Zhengfei issued the meeting minutes of the "Patent Licensing Business Report," stating, "Previously, our intellectual property was for self-defense, to ensure the security of our business. Through years of accumulation, we have formed high-value patent packages in several key areas such as 5G, WiFi6, audio-video coding, optical transmission, and optical intelligence, gaining some influence. We need to establish a reasonable price benchmark, gain appropriate R&D returns, and also help establish an innovator image in the international community."

However, it seems that Huawei's accumulated payments for others' licenses are much higher than the licensing income. Historically, Huawei's accumulated patent licensing fees are about three times the accumulated licensing income, possibly exceeding 12 billion US dollars. Comparing Huawei's R&D investment and licensing revenue with companies like Nokia, Ericsson, and Qualcomm in 2022, Huawei's accumulated R&D investment is almost the sum of the other three, but its licensing revenue is only 1/4, or even 1/12 of Qualcomm's.

"Huawei is both a patent licensing party and a licensed party. When we make more contributions to a technology, we can obtain net licensing income; whereas if we benefit more from a technology, we will pay licensing fees to other patent holders," Fan Zhiyong said. Huawei advocates a balanced intellectual property strategy, achieving a balance between encouraging innovation and promoting application. Up to now, 48 Fortune Global 500 companies have directly or indirectly obtained Huawei's patent license.

Image source: Observer Net

Intellectual property rules reward competitive innovative companies, encouraging them to invest in R&D. Especially, standard essential patent licensing can generate significant economic effects: through licensing, manufacturers can jointly develop technical standards. This is crucial for global competition and the vigorous development of the industry.

As of the end of 2024, Huawei has signed 233 patent licensing agreements, of which 95% were reached through negotiation and mediation. Over the past three years, Huawei has signed or renewed patent cross-licensing agreements with major international manufacturers such as Nokia, Ericsson, Amazon, Samsung, and Sharp. In 2024, Huawei's published Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) international patent applications reached 6,600, continuing to rank first among PCT global users.

However, Fan Zhiyong also stated that Huawei would use judicial procedures when necessary. For example, in June this year, Huawei sued Transsion Holdings and its affiliated companies in the Unified Patent Court (UPC) in Europe, accusing them of infringing on a patent related to smartphone image display modules.

Song Liuping believes that open innovation is an important force in promoting social development and technological progress, and is Huawei's DNA. So far, over 200,000 Huawei patents have entered the public domain, available for free use by the public.

Last June, Huawei launched the "Chasi Patent" on the "Tea Room Website" globally, offering a simple and easy-to-use patent search tool for researchers around the world, helping to publicize patent data. The project's funding comes from Huawei's patent licensing revenue, and users can use it for free.

Since the launch of Chasi Patent over a year ago, the number of visits has exceeded two million, and it has received positive feedback from researchers. As a public welfare project, the functions of Chasi Patent have been upgraded again at this forum, launching features such as "semantic search" and "AI summary."

Looking ahead, Song Liuping stated that we are accelerating toward a fully connected intelligent society. Connectivity and computing are two of the most important cornerstones of the future world, and protecting and rewarding innovation is equally important. Huawei hopes to actively promote the improvement of the innovation and intellectual property environment through its own practices. "No matter how the external environment changes, Huawei will always be committed to openness, cooperation, and innovation. Huawei is willing to work with industry partners to promote the establishment of an atmosphere for intellectual property protection and achieve common development of the industry."

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Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7571642245019976235/

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