Founded in 2009, Reolink is a Chinese manufacturer of security cameras and smart home technology. This market is rapidly expanding and is one of the smaller IoT verticals that is increasingly in the peripheral vision of SEP owners and patent pools (ie. those that license out HEVC and VVC patents).
Currently, HEVC and VVC are typically licensed only for end devices. For example, Via Licensing licenses HEVC to “HEVC Products Sold to End Users”, while Access Advance licenses to three categories of products: mobile devices (including tablets and laptops), connected home devices (covering everything from set-top-boxes, game consoles to security cameras) and 4K UHD TVs (including projectors and VR/AR sets).
Reolink’s General Counsel and Director of IP and Legal Affairs Dongfang Shan heads up a small team of 18 attorneys, 10 of which are dedicated to patents. Together, they manage a portfolio of roughly 200 patents, most of which are filed in China, Europe and the U.S., and cover security camera and doorbell technologies.
Mr. Shan first joined Reolink in November 2023 after working a short stint as General Counsel at vehicle diagnostics firm Autel Intelligent Technology Corp. and eight years at Huawei. At the latter, Mr. Shan started as a patent prosecutor, before working his way up to computing device portfolio manager and then principal IP counsel, during which he signed off on several major licensing transactions involving 5G and Wi-Fi technologies.
ip fray sat down with Mr. Shan to discuss how he has started implementing his learnings from Huawei at Reolink (a comparably much smaller company), how he believes instilling confidence in his subordinates leads to successful leadership, and the challenges of switching from the licensor to the licensee side of the negotiation table.
Leadership philosophy
Mr. Shan heads both the legal team and the IP team and reports directly to the founder and CEO. His main tasks since being appointed have entailed building a stronger patent portfolio, ensuring the company succeeds in several pending matters it has been involved in, and training the R&D team so it better understands the concept of IP.
“Before I joined, the R&D folk didn’t have much IP-related experience and were not empowered to give ideas to address IP issues,” he says. “Compared with Huawei – which is very mature – Reolink still has a lot to enhance with regards to IP. One of my rules is encouraging the R&D members to understand IP and its importance.”
The company has also significantly stepped up its filing since Mr. Shan came on board. Last year, it filed three times the patents it filed in 2023.
Taking on all of these new issues has been a welcome challenge for Mr. Shan, who spent years working his way up Huawei’s IP ranks and left after signing off on its first 5G and Wi-Fi 6 agreements, including co-setting the royalty rates of the portfolios. “Those, alongside helping to settle Huawei’s litigation against IPB – brought by Japanese patent fund operator IP Bridge – were probably among my biggest career highlights,” he says.
“The diversity of my experience – from prosecuting to managing portfolios to handling licensing programmes and steering litigation – has really eased me into this head role at Reolink,” Mr. Shan adds.
But, he emphasizes, in addition to Huawei’s current IP head Alan Fan, who recruited Mr. Shan from university, there are three individuals in particular who have influenced and inspired him the most:
- Song Nie: his first mentor at the company and “the inspiring guide who helped [him] find [his] way into this profession”, Mr. Shan says. Mr. Nie helped him understand patents from a legal perspective – and not just a technical perspective when Mr. Shan still had no legal experience.
- Xuxin Cheng: the head of licensing and transactions and deputy of IP, Mr. Cheng was the one to appoint him to the transaction team, putting him in charge of several important programmes and helping him cultivate his negotiation and programme managing skills. All of his licensing and litigation skills originated from Mr. Cheng. His leadership approach did too – when Mr. Shan was first appointed to the programme and licensing roles, he was not a trained lawyer and had very little hands-on experience, but Mr. Cheng told him to do his best and that he would be there for him if need be.
- Jason Ding: Huawei’s former IP head, Mr. Ding raised Mr. Shan’s profile internally by encouraging him to report directly to Huawei’s CEO. For Huawei employees, it is very rare to see the “big folk”, Mr. Shan says, so these types of opportunities were quite special.
Mr. Shan believes “confidence is everything” and he applies everything that was encouraged of him to his own teams:
“I truly learned a lot from this style – it helped me to break my boundaries. So when I am leading, I also encourage my team members to break their boundaries. Even if they don’t have licensing or litigation experience I tell them to go for it and say: ‘I am there, together with you.’ Of course, if the negotiation goes south then I will step in – but I will always encourage them to take the lead. This is my leadership philosophy.”
But applying experience from a major, global licensor to a comparably smaller implementer only goes so far. Reolink is still very much on the licensee side of the table, and that means two things:
- Mr. Shan still has a way to go to build out the portfolio so it can become more of an active licensor.
- Mr. Shan has found himself having to “beat his past self”. He helped create some of the clauses included in Huawei’s pool licensing agreements (Sisvel’s Wi-Fi 6 pool, for example), and being on the other end of that has been harder than he’d thought.
Staying ahead of competition
Reolink has joined Via LA’s HEVC patent pool as a licensee. When asked about whether it will join other pools, Mr. Shan says:
“Reolink always respects the IPRs of others and is committed to fostering a culture of innovation and fair competition. We demonstrated this commitment by entering into a lot of license agreements with other vendors. However, Reolink also believes respect for IPRs must be grounded in fairness, so we do not accept or engage in arrangements which are unjust or unreasonable.”
Business on the product side is good – Reolink focuses on mid-to-high-end products and targets markets in Europe and the U.S., according to Mr. Shan. “If your prices are higher then it is usually not good for you in terms of competition in the Chinese market,” he explains. But, where Reolink is active, the market is still growing and competition isn’t too fierce yet.
When asked about the U.S. tariffs, Mr. Shan also seems relaxed:
“It certainly would squeeze the profit margins a bit but as long as we keep our product competitive on the tech side then we will be on a level playing field.”
Long-term, the IP head wants to build out his team significantly – “hopefully they would be better than me in the IP field someday”. And, he says, to get Reolink portfolio to a better level than its competitors: “I need to at least make sure that the IP is not a weak point for Reolink.”
While right now the market is still growing, it will one day become mature and that will be followed by litigation. “I hope that if that happens, we’ll be ready, and our IP shall safeguard the business, and even become a leverage for revenue growth like Nokia or Huawei,” he says.
Mr. Shan doesn’t know where he sees himself in the next five years. But one thing he is certain about is that he wants to constantly be pushing himself beyond his comfort zone:
“I like to try different stuff. If I had continued working for Huawei, my personal income might be way higher but I had already done everything there was to do there and I wanted to go beyond my given scope. I believe it is so important to try new and different stuff. So, if I am still at Reolink, I hope that I’ll have been able to extend way beyond my current IP scope.”