On March 16, Huawei released its White Paper on Innovation and Intellectual Property 2020 at a forum in Shenzhen. According to the White Paper, by the end of 2020, Huawei held more than 100,000 active patents in over 40,000 patent families worldwide, of which over 90% are inventions.
At the forum, Jason Ding, Head of Huawei's Intellectual Property Rights Department, announced Huawei’s royalty rate for multi-mode 5G smartphone, with a per unit royalty cap at US$2.5 and a reasonable percentage royalty rate for the handset selling price. Huawei estimates it will receive 1.2 to 1.3 billion US dollars in revenue from patent licensing between 2019 and 2021.
Song Liuping, Huawei's Chief Legal Officer, said that over the past two decades, Huawei has conducted extensive cross-licensing negotiations with key patent holders in the ICT industry and has entered into more than 100 patent license agreements with major global ICT companies across Europe, the United States, Japan, and South Korea.
It is reported that Huawei would invest 10% to 15% of its annual revenue to R&D, accumulating to the total R&D investment of over USD 90 billion in the last decade. As of 2020, Huawei had 105,000 R&D employees, roughly 53.4% of its workforce. Huawei ranked third in the world on the recently released 2020 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard.