By Kevin Mack, President, Via Licensing Alliance
Last month, I had the opportunity to travel to Beijing to participate as a featured speaker at the China Intellectual Property Annual Conference (CIPAC). It was an exceptionally productive visit. Beyond the conference itself, I spent time meeting with a wide range of companies, licensing professionals, and innovators across the Chinese intellectual property ecosystem. Those conversations reinforced something that has become increasingly clear over the past several years: China’s role in the global standard essential patent (SEP) landscape is evolving rapidly, and its influence is likely to grow significantly in the years ahead.
For anyone involved in patent licensing, that evolution deserves close attention.
One of the strongest impressions I took away from the trip was the maturation of China’s innovation economy. For years, discussions about Chinese intellectual property often focused on patent volume. Today, the conversation is increasingly focused on patent quality, technical contributions, and long-term innovation strategy. Chinese companies continue to invest heavily in research and development, and the result is a growing portfolio of important technologies that are contributing to global standards and creating meaningful licensing opportunities.
From my perspective, China is no longer simply a major manufacturing center or technology implementation market. It is increasingly becoming a significant source of foundational intellectual property.
At Via Licensing Alliance, we naturally view these developments through the lens of collaborative licensing. Our business has always been built around creating efficient pathways that connect innovators and implementers. Through that lens, the rise of Chinese companies as major IP owners is a positive development for the broader licensing ecosystem.
Healthy licensing markets depend on diverse participation. They depend on innovators from different regions contributing technologies, participating in standards development, and seeking fair compensation for their inventions. As Chinese companies further “lean in” to full participation in the global SEP space and continue to assume a larger role as creators and owners of valuable intellectual property, that only strengthens the foundation upon which global licensing programs are built.
During my presentation at CIPAC, I also shared an observation that I believe will become increasingly important in the coming years. Chinese innovation is steadily expanding beyond many of the consumer-facing digital and internet applications that drove earlier waves of growth. Today, we are seeing significant investment in critical infrastructure technologies, including semiconductors, memory, AI infrastructure, data center technologies, renewable energy systems, and advanced manufacturing.
These are areas where collaborative licensing models can be particularly effective.
Unlike many traditional products, these technologies are rarely the result of a single company or inventor. They are built atop deeply interconnected ecosystems involving standards organizations, hardware manufacturers, research institutions, software developers, and infrastructure providers. As technical complexity increases, so does the challenge of efficiently licensing the intellectual property required to bring products and services to market.
That is precisely where collaborative licensing can deliver value. By creating predictable, efficient licensing frameworks that aggregate rights from multiple patent owners, patent pools can reduce transaction costs, improve transparency, and help innovators and implementers focus on what they do best: creating new technologies and bringing them to market.
I expect the importance of these models to grow substantially as AI infrastructure, semiconductors, and energy technologies become even more central to the global economy.
We are already seeing an evolution in how Chinese companies engage with intellectual property. Historically, many Chinese technology companies participated in licensing programs primarily as licensees. Today, an increasing number are entering the market as licensors as well.
This shift is significant. Many Chinese companies are now generating substantial patent portfolios, investing strategically in SEP development, and taking a far more active approach to licensing and monetization. In some cases, companies are collecting more royalty revenue than they are paying. That represents a major evolution in the market and reflects China’s growing position as a source of innovation rather than simply an adopter of technology.
For collaborative licensing organizations like Via, this trend creates new opportunities for partnership. We are already seeing increased interest from Chinese companies seeking to participate in licensing programs not only as implementers but also as patent contributors and rights holders. We are seeing this in our Qi Wireless program and elsewhere in our business.
The emergence of artificial intelligence and data center technologies further amplifies China’s importance within the licensing ecosystem. AI ultimately depends on infrastructure. Behind every large language model, advanced inference engine, and generative AI application sits an enormous network of semiconductors, memory technologies, storage systems, networking standards, and data center resources.
China plays a major role across many of these technology domains. That reality creates meaningful opportunities for Chinese innovators, global licensing organizations, and technology implementers alike.
My visit to China reinforced my optimism about where the global licensing market is headed. The conversations I had were thoughtful, forward-looking, and focused on creating practical solutions that support innovation.
China’s intellectual property ecosystem continues to mature at an impressive pace. The companies that recognize this evolution and proactively explore opportunities for collaboration will be best positioned to succeed.
The future of global SEP licensing will be shaped by participation, cooperation, and innovation from around the world. China is already playing a major role in that story, and I believe its contribution will only become more significant in the years ahead.