On April 14th, Huawei, which has been repeatedly frustrated in the United States, finally won a decisive victory. This intellectual property dispute between Huawei and Motorola ended with both parties reaching a settlement on all outstanding litigation, and Motorola agreed to pay Huawei an intellectual property transfer fee. This is also the first time that a Chinese telecommunications company has won a victory in an intellectual property dispute with a foreign-funded enterprise.
Huawei, which has been sued by other companies time and again since it went global, has become a representative and typical example of Chinese enterprises being "attacked" in terms of intellectual property rights to some extent. Behind the continuous litigation, Huawei has become the top enterprise in China with patents. More importantly, Chinese enterprises represented by Huawei have gradually learned to combine patents with standards, on the one hand to deal with the abuse of intellectual property rights by foreign enterprises in standards, and on the other hand to gain an advantage in market competition.
Building a defense "anti-electricity wall"
After more than four years of fierce debate, when the anti-electric wall technology for electric water heaters jointly proposed by Haier and other enterprises was finally included in the new national standard in 2006, there were both praises and questions. The praise was because it was particularly important for the industry to formulate a safety standard for electric water heaters with universal guiding significance. The questioning came from the fact that the "anti-electric wall" technology was a patented technology of Haier, and there was a suspicion of building a "technical barrier" by writing it into the national standard.
In such a "praise" and "question" voice, Haier's anti-electric wall standard has made further progress in 2008, and has smoothly passed a series of review procedures at the IEC TC61 general meeting, and has been officially written into the latest version of the "Special Requirements for Safety of Storage Type Electric Water Heaters for Home and Similar Uses" (IEC 60335-2-21). Haier is about to become the first Chinese home appliance enterprise to rewrite the international standard with its patented anti-electric wall technology for the research and development of water heater products. Dr. Wang Haijun, Director of the Standard Technology Department of Haier Group, said that there are actually other solutions to the safety problems such as leakage of electric water heaters. Haier's "anti-electric wall" technology is just one of the ways to achieve the safe path. Because the national testing standard only stipulates the testing method, but does not limit the specific solution path, there are many ways to achieve the testing index path, and Haier provides is "anti-electric wall".
Faced with numerous comments from the outside world, Wang Haijun and Haier seem very calm: "Standards are like a carrier. Once integrated with corporate patents, they will undoubtedly be more vibrant and also put enterprises in a more favorable position in competition. However, this is not the only starting point for enterprises to participate in the formulation of standards."
Greeting the offensive "Dawn"
From the formation of China's high-performance computer standardization organization, the formulation of our country's independently owned high-performance computer standards, from the concept into the substantive planning stage, to the present, Du Jing, the acting secretary-general of the China High-Performance Computer Standardization Working Committee, has already entered the planning team.
Du Jing clearly remembered that it was still in the spring of 2006, when foreign server companies were seizing the opportunity to upgrade and replace high-performance computer products, and were eager to formulate and launch their own high-performance computer standards combined with intellectual property rights, so as to create a comprehensive industrial ecosystem from chips, operating systems to infrastructure, storage, switching, applications, etc.
In general, without a standard, domestic customers tend to choose products from large companies such as IBM when selecting blade server products. In this case, if a unified industry standard is not formulated and implemented, and if each company is fighting alone, domestic server companies will not be able to compete with foreign peers. Over time, China's national server companies will inevitably lose their technological voice and will have to pay a high price for intellectual property licenses.
In response to this situation, as one of the leading enterprises in domestic high-performance computers, Shuguang felt it necessary to call on the entire industry to unite and formulate our own high-performance computing standard in China. Thus, on March 28, 2007, the China High-Performance Computer Standard Working Committee (hereinafter referred to as the High Standard Committee), led by Shuguang Company, was established, with 23 representatives from various aspects of "production, academia, research, and application" of high-performance computers in China joining. As an expert in Shuguang's standard group, Du Jing naturally became a "founding member" of the High Standard Committee.
Today, he elaborated on the IP policy of the High Perf. Comp. Standards Committee: The HPCCSC has established an IP policy, which in principle does not oppose the adoption of patented technologies in the final standard. However, when considering whether to adopt a proposal in the HPCCSC standard draft, the task group can take into account the submitted disclosure statements on patents. To facilitate the commercial application of the final high-performance computing standard, the task group will adopt the internationally recognized default obligations and licensing principles when balancing competing proposals with substantially the same technical performance and implementation costs.
In Du Jing's view, only when domestic server manufacturers form an industry alliance, design and formulate standards and patented technologies for various modules of high-performance computers, will it be possible to compete with foreign server companies in the coming years and occupy a place in the domestic server market. "Standards are the highest level of technological development. Combining standards with intellectual property protection to form a new technology monopoly alliance is undoubtedly a choice to pursue the greatest economic interests," Du Jing said.
The inevitable choice of market competition
"First-class enterprises set standards, second-class enterprises develop technology, and third-class enterprises make products," a widely-circulated saying that was once followed by many companies. It was against this backdrop that the international scene even saw the emergence of companies like Qualcomm, which specializes in licensing patented technologies and standards, focusing solely on patents and ensuring they are included in various standards, ultimately waiting to collect high patent fees.
Niu ChaoHui, deputy director of the AVS Standard Patent Pool Management Center in China, divided the international standard patent enterprises into three categories: the first is represented by Intel and IBM, who do not rely on patent fees to win the market, and their strong technical strength and patent quantity are more for defense; the second is represented by Sony, Thomson and other enterprises, which not only do technology standards and patents, but also charge patent fees; the third is most enterprises, which have few patents and can only take others' standards and pay patent fees. Therefore, enterprises must choose the right patent policy when making standards, considering not only the patents of others in the standards, but also their own patents.
At present, there is a reasonable non-discriminatory (RAND) license for intellectual property in international standards, which is regarded as the bottom line of the intellectual property policy of international standards. International standardizing organizations such as ISO, IEC, ITU all hope that the intellectual property right owners can disclose the intellectual property information related to the standard proposal as soon as possible, and advocate the coordination of standardization and intellectual property issues through the principle of RAND.
Niu ChaoHui said that this principle also has its own bottlenecks, and there is no clear definition of "what is reasonable and what is non-discriminatory." "The reason why this principle is popular is that it actually benefits the patentee, and the final voice is also in the hands of the patentee, so enterprises must strive to master core technologies," said Shi ShaoHua, the head of the Public Department of the Intellectual Property Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. He pointed out that when enterprises combine intellectual property strategy with standard strategy, they must first do a good job of their own patents, especially emphasizing the quality of patents.
For related questions, please consult Huaxu Zhengxin Intellectual Property: Phone 010-67089491, WeChat official account: huaip1, or email:info@huaip.com.