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Huawei’s IPR Vision:
Huawei’s IPR progress:
A global IP team
Huawei’s IP team is dispersed throughout the globe. Apart from its China Headquarters, Huawei has also set up IP divisions in Europe, the Asia-Pacific, the Americas and the United States, where the teams strive to serve innovations of local research institutions with operational expertise and share Huawei’s IP on the ground.
Emil Zhang
Head, European IPR Department
In our more than 14 years in Europe since 2008, Huawei’s European IPR Department firmly sides with European’s industry in R&D activities and advocates to support a future-oriented and mutually beneficial innovation eco-system.
Supporting Huawei’s R&D in Europe, which focuses on co-creating cutting-edge technologies with our European partners in key areas (e.g. A.I. automotive, low-carbon, etc.), Huawei’s European IPR Department is committed to provide profound legal support to 27 European R&D centers in 14 European countries. We ensure a quicker understanding of the EU rules, better compliance with regulations, and more comprehensive cooperation with EU industry partners in a seamless way.
We are also dedicated to acquiring, maintaining and managing IPR outputs from Huawei’s constant investment in Europe, resulting in Huawei’s granted patents in 2021 ranked number 1 by the European Patent Office.
Additionally, we are advocating and putting into practice of a balanced and reasonable licensing program to ensure a fair compensation of R&D investment and in the meantime, eliminate business uncertainties for the EU industries as many as possible by sharing our innovations.
One recent license agreement with Nordic Semiconductor, entered into less than half a year without litigation, is a vivid example that Huawei helps European leading companies in eliminating the business risks of its more than 1,300 end user customers, who will now more than willing to cooperate with Nordic. Huawei firmly believes that by sharing our continuous innovation with European industry partners in a reasonable way, we will be able to jointly grow together with the European industry.
David Wang
Head, Asia Pacific IPR Department
As a newly founded regional division, Huawei Asia Pacific IPR Department reflects Huawei has actively contributed to industrial development in countries and regions where it is active and has dedicated to broaden the innovation landscape in APAC regions. As we continue to leverage our extensive global portfolios and experience locally, Huawei has held a leading position in patent application in Japan, Republic of Korea, Vietnam and India.
To further assist the digital growth of countries in the Asia-Pacific area, we will invest $50 million in the next few years to cultivate 50,000 personnel, in a joint effort to facilitate the development of local industries, talent and IP.
The first year of founding, Asia Pacific IPR Department has acted actively and started substantial patent licensing discussions with many major manufacturers of smartphones, routers, intelligent vehicles, and products in other domains in APAC regions. In 2022, Huawei has entered into a license agreement under its standard essential patents with a major device manufacture in APAC. In 2021, Huawei also licensed its Wi-Fi 6 patents to Buffalo Inc., Japan’s leading provider of networking, storage and memory solutions. Huawei firmly believes that by sharing our continuous innovation with Asian-Pacific industry partners in a reasonable way, we will be able to jointly grow together with the Asian-Pacific industry.
Benjamin Wu
Head, Americas IPR Department
Huawei Americas IPR Department is located in Ottawa, Canada. As a successor of Canadian IPR team with Huawei Canada Research Institutes, its major responsibility remains to help Huawei Canada Research Institutes and its partners to protect their innovations by all necessary and proper means, especially by filing patents in multiple jurisdictions. Working along with excellent external patent agents and attorneys, our in-house patent responsible managers dedicate their daily work to patent portfolio value building based on advanced technologies invented by engineers with Huawei Canada Research Institutes and their cooperation partners, including in wireless communications, optical communications, Artificial Intelligence, semi-conductors and other edge technical fields.
As always, Huawei believes virtuous circle of R&D investment and commercial payoff of the innovations helps healthy and sustainable development of technologies in human society. In addition to provide our advanced products and services, Huawei offers to license its valuable Intellectual Properties on a balanced position to its customers and partners to help them to provide better solutions to the societies in Americas. By recognizing the continuous increasing value of Intellectual Properties in Americas, Huawei is willing to put more resources into this area to build IP communities together with agencies, customers, and partners, to make Americas play more and more important roles in IP protection globally. Americas IPR Department expects to play a key role to archive this goal.
Steven Geiszler
Head, United States IPR Department
Huawei’s American subsidiary Futurewei Technologies is home to the U.S. IPR Department, a team of 13 lawyers, patent agents, and paralegals in Dallas, Texas and in Silicon Valley, California. The team manages U.S. patent prosecution, licensing, and litigation in addition to other intellectual property matters.
Responsible for some of Huawei’s key technologies and issues, the U.S. team relies on seasoned personnel to provide expert advice to Huawei and its inventors. Huawei established the U.S. team in 2008 and soon hired a veteran U.S. patent practitioner, Paul Hashim, to lead the team beginning in 2009. Paul brought to Huawei private practice experience from firms in New York and Washington, D.C., as well as corporate patent department experience obtained from his work at Nortel and Texas Instruments. The U.S. team put in place patent prosecution and review programs that led to issuance of many of Huawei’s key patents and portfolios in important technologies such as 4G LTE and 5G cellular, as well as the H.266 video codec standard.
With a shift in emphasis from patent portfolio development to licensing, leadership of the U.S. team transitioned in 2021 from Paul Hashim to Steven Geiszler, who joined the U.S. team in 2016 after 15 years at international law firms, handling complex patent litigation in venues including some of America’s key patent courts, such as the Eastern District of Texas, District of Delaware, and U.S. International Trade Commission. For that work, Steven was recognized in distinguished directories such as Chambers USA and Best Lawyers in America, and he often speaks on patent issues at conferences and universities around the world.
Other U.S. team members have advanced degrees and industry experience in engineering and computer science. The patent prosecutors, who make up about two-thirds of the U.S. team, not only prosecute (i.e., apply for) patents, but they work closely with inventors to identify and characterize new inventions and coordinate with outside law firms that handle even more patent applications. All U.S. team members, however, are encouraged to work on matters outside their primary focus. For example, patent prosecutors are often asked to join teams involved in licensing discussions with other companies, or to support patent-litigation cases. Such cross-discipline opportunities add variety to their jobs and allow those individuals opportunities to work and interact with people they otherwise might not meet. The U.S. team’s emphasis on cross-discipline work has the added benefit of keeping them nimble and able to change focus whenever needed to adjust to changes in Huawei’s business focus.
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