Today, Huawei held its sixth Innovation and Intellectual Property Forum, where the company announced the winners of its biannual “Top Ten Inventions” award.
The event gathered experts in innovation and intellectual property from around the world to explore the importance of openness and IP protection in driving innovation and social progress.
“Open innovation drives society and technology forward, and it’s in our DNA. We are committed to an open approach to innovation,” said the company’s Chief Legal Officer, Liuping Song. “Huawei respects the IP of others, and protects our own, including patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.”
In 2024, Huawei’s patent licensing revenue was approximately US$630 million. The patent royalties that Huawei has paid over the years are nearly three times the amount of royalties it has received.
Marco Alemán, Assistant Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, noted that Huawei “is a leading global user of WIPO’s Global IP Services and a strong driver of innovation”.
“Huawei had 6,600 published Patent Cooperation Treaty applications in 2024, and has been the top user of the PCT system since 2014,” added Alemán.
Etienne Sanz de Acedo, CEO of the International Trademark Association, stated, “As an intangible asset, IP is a universal language that translates innovation and creativity into quantifiable value.”
Ningling Wang, President-elect of the Licensing Executives Society International, encouraged “industry leaders, policymakers, researchers, and entrepreneurs to foster collaboration, to share knowledge, to reduce barriers, and to practice responsible licensing”.
At the forum, Huawei unveiled the innovations that won its sixth Top Ten Inventions award, spanning a range of business domains crucial to future development, including computing, the HarmonyOS operating system, and storage.
Alan Fan, Vice-President and Head of the Intellectual Property Rights Department at Huawei, reiterated that, as a leading contributor to technology in the ICT sector, Huawei shares its technologies through open-source software, open hardware, patent filings, standard contributions, and academic papers.
In 2024, Huawei published 37,000 patents, setting a new record for the company. In addition, Huawei submitted more than 10,000 technical contributions to standards organisations and published over 1,000 academic papers.
Meanwhile, the source code for OpenHarmony grew by another 10 million lines, with submissions from over 8,100 community contributors, and openEuler exceeded 10 million installations.
By the end of 2024, in the cellular standard field, more than 2.7 billion 5G devices have been licensed under Huawei’s patents. In the Wi-Fi domain, over 1.2 billion consumer electronic devices have been licensed under Huawei’s patents.
In the multimedia industry, more than 3.2 billion multimedia devices have been licensed under the company’s video codec patents. A total of 48 Fortune Global 500 companies are Huawei licensees, either directly or indirectly.
Heiwai Tang, Associate Vice-President of the University of Hong Kong, also addressed the forum.
“Innovation is a core driver of modern economic growth, and its sustained operation relies upon a robust, open, and globally-trusted patent system,” Tang noted. “I’m pleased to see companies like Huawei adhering to international IP norms, which maximise the value of IP while fostering a healthy business ecosystem.”
As part of its efforts to drive open innovation, Huawei launched the Chaspark Patent site in June 2024. It’s a free and robust platform for researchers worldwide to search for patent information, a service that can be prohibitively expensive for students, individual researchers, and small tech organisations. Today, the company announced major updates to Chaspark Patent, including new features such as semantic search and AI summary.
Other guest speakers at the forum include Yali Zhu, General Manager of PatSnap China; Qi Wang, Asia Pacific Director of Clarivate; Mattia Fogliacco, President of Sisvel; and Laurie Fitzgerald, President of Avanci Vehicle. They shared their own experience and best practices in open innovation.
Song said, “We are committed to building an environment that protects innovation and IP, and work closely with industry partners to promote constructive IP protection. This way, the industry can continue to grow and develop together.”
