Ren Zhengfei: Huawei will not “weaponize” patent intellectual property rights

A few days ago, Huawei’s founder and president, Ren Zhengfei, had an open discussion with Forbes famous writer, George Gilder and Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of the MIT media lab at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen. When asked if Huawei will weaponize it’s over 80,000 patents, Ren Zhengfei said that Huawei has a lot of intellectual property rights. Will it be “weaponized”? Certainly not. 

“However, intellectual property rights are created through labor, so cross-licensing and mutual payment between us and other companies are necessary, but we cannot use it as a weapon to suppress the development of human society” he added. When talking about intellectual property issues, some reporters asked Ren Zhengfei that many US media now say that Huawei has stolen a large number of trade secrets and intellectual property rights of Western companies in the early days of its business. In this regard, Ren Zhengfei said: “Huawei is very standardized from the beginning…If there is no ethical conduct, we will not be able to go today. Although we have several intellectual property lawsuits with the United States, we believe that the US court’s judgment is basically fair. So, the reports that we are stealing intellectual property rights are unfounded.”

Recall that US Senator, Marco Rubio, is proposing an amendment to prevent Huawei from passing damage through the US Patent Court. Huawei’s patents application in the US is over 3000. If his proposed amendment pulls through, a bulk of Huawei’s patent may not be recognized in the US. However, his proposal is only at a preliminary stage and there is no telling what the final outcome will be. For now, Huawei’s patents in the US are still recognized in the United States. Ever since the company was added to the US entity list, Huawei has been a subject of discussion in the tech world.

Via