Huawei has held its sixth Innovation and Intellectual Property (IP) Forum where the organisation announced the winners of its biennial ‘Top Ten Inventions’ award. The event gathered global experts in innovation and intellectual property to discuss the role of openness and strong IP protection in driving technological 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 Liuping Song, Huawei Chief Legal Officer. “Huawei respects the IP of others and protects its own, including patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets.”
In 2024, Huawei generated approximately US$630 million in patent licensing revenue, while the royalties it has paid over the years total nearly three times the amount received.
Marco Alemán, Assistant Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), said: “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.”
Huawei unveiled this year’s award-winning inventions across computing, the HarmonyOS operating system and storage. Alan Fan, Vice President and Head of the Intellectual Property Rights Department, highlighted Huawei’s contributions through open-source software, open hardware, patent filings, standards work and academic research.
In 2024, Huawei published 37,000 patents, submitted more than 10,000 technical contributions to standards bodies and released over 1,000 academic papers. OpenHarmony gained 10 million new lines of source code from over 8,100 contributors, while openEuler installations exceeded 10 million.
By the end of 2024, over 2.7 billion 5G devices had been licensed under Huawei patents. More than 1.2 billion Wi-Fi devices and 3.2 billion multimedia devices were also licensed under Huawei technology, while 48 Fortune Global 500 companies are direct or indirect Huawei licensees.
Heiwai Tang, Associate Vice-President of the University of Hong Kong, said a trusted, global patent system underpins modern economic growth and praised Huawei’s adherence to international norms.
Huawei also announced major updates to its Chaspark Patent platform, launched in 2024, adding semantic search and AI summary features to support researchers, students and small organisations. Guest speakers from PatSnap China, Clarivate, Sisvel and Avanci Vehicle shared best practices in open innovation.
Song concluded that Huawei remains committed to building an environment that protects innovation and IP, working with industry partners to support continued growth across the ecosystem.
