WIPO China: Forum on "IP for the Globalization of SMEs: Sharing by WIPO Global Award Winners" Held in Beijing

The 15th China Intellectual Property Annual Conference (CIPAC), themed "Striving to Promote High-Quality Development of IP Undertakings in the 15th Five-Year Plan Period," was held at the China National Convention Center Phase II in Beijing on September 8-9, 2026. On the afternoon of September 8, the WIPO Office in China, together with the Intellectual Property Publishing House, co-hosted a forum under the theme "IP for the Globalization of SMEs: Sharing by WIPO Global Award Winners." Moderated by Ms. Liu Hua, Director of the WIPO Office in China, the forum brought together representatives of seven Chinese enterprises that have won or been shortlisted for the WIPO Global Awards, alongside officials from government departments and industry organizations, to share practices and reflections on using IP to enter international markets.

In her opening remarks, Ms. Liu noted that all the participating enterprises have won or been shortlisted for the WIPO Global Awards since 2022, and that many of them have since become leaders in their fields or holders of key products and standards. She expressed the hope that their experience would show SMEs planning to start up or go global how IP can strengthen innovative competitiveness and open the door to international markets, and that the forum would also surface the real difficulties enterprises encounter in filing patents, trademarks and industrial designs, and in enforcing their rights overseas.

Mr. Feng Xu, Deputy Director of the China Center for Promotion of SME Development, said that cooperation between the Center and WIPO has moved from event-based exchanges to regular, institutionalized services. On September 4, 2026, at the 21st China International SME Fair, the jointly established IP Empowerment Center was officially inaugurated. He observed that the WIPO Global Awards offer a window onto the quality of Chinese SME innovation: participation has grown from 272 enterprises in 62 countries in the inaugural edition to more than 1,300 enterprises from 126 countries in 2026. China has had 28 enterprises shortlisted in total, accounting for 21 percent of all shortlisted worldwide and ranking first globally for several consecutive years, with nine enterprises receiving awards.

Mr. Feng further identified four features shared by the shortlisted Chinese enterprises. First, specialized, refined, distinctive and innovative (SRDI) SMEs now make up the bulk of nominees, with the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region together accounting for over 80 percent, while cities such as Xi'an and Chengdu have also broken through. Second, the anchor of innovation is shifting rapidly from downstream assembly to upstream core links; all six enterprises shortlisted in 2026 focus on core upstream technologies, moving from "making products" to "making materials and algorithms." Third, digitalization and green development are driving innovation in tandem, with integrated innovation becoming the mainstream path. Fourth, IP internationalization is accelerating from passive defense to proactive planning, with several enterprises each filing more than one hundred international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

Ms. Ding Lan, Deputy Director General of the Jiangsu Provincial Intellectual Property Administration, shared the province's experience in enabling SMEs to go global. Two of the three Chinese winners of the 2026 Global Awards come from Jiangsu; together with a winner from the inaugural 2022 edition, the province has now produced three Global Awards companies. Jiangsu follows an approach of "compliance first, services at the grassroots, protection as the backstop, and value unlocked," she said: it has guided 40,000 enterprises in establishing standardized IP management systems and supported 1,368 enterprises in piloting the international standard on innovation management and IP; it has built eight Technology and Innovation Support Centers (TISCs) and 140 public information service outlets offering global patent searches, freedom-to-operate (FTO) risk analysis and overseas portfolio planning free of charge, serving more than 10,000 enterprises a year; it has established 16 national-level platforms for handling overseas disputes and 32 overseas rights protection workstations, and in 2025 provided targeted guidance nearly 300 times to 176 enterprises; and it has rolled out more than 120 dedicated financial products, including IP-backed loans and insurance for overseas expansion, with IP pledge financing surpassing RMB 100 billion for two consecutive years.

In the High-end Dialogue session, representatives from different industries and regions described the role IP has played in their globalization.

Ms. Wei Liang, General Manager of Shanghai SHYLON Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., said her company specializes in LED lighting and laser projection, serving landmark buildings and cultural tourism projects worldwide. After winning the inaugural Global Award in 2022, her strongest impression was that Chinese lighting companies had moved from "going out" to "moving up," as the trust threshold for international clients dropped substantially. The company won lighting contracts for several stadiums at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar that same year, and later took part in the construction of China Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka.

Ms. Luo Jueyong, Director of Public Affairs at Beijing Healinno Technology Co., Ltd., said the company was founded in 2021 and focuses on surgical robots for urology, with all products developed in-house and manufactured domestically. It has filed more than 180 patent applications, of which over 80 have been granted, including two US patents. She said the 2024 award provided "official global endorsement," evidencing the company's patent moat and independent innovation capability, and played a substantive role in subsequent financing rounds. Since the award, the company has begun global filings through the PCT and the Madrid System.

Ms. Wang Jiawen, Director of Public Affairs at Xi'an KissFuture Network Technology Co., Ltd., noted that her company won the 2023 Global Award for its Terracotta Warriors VR project, the only Chinese creative-industry winner that year. "IP is not a cost; it is what gives an SME confidence," she said, adding that sustained IP planning enabled an asset-light SME in western China to sit at the negotiating table with leading museums and major telecom operators. Following the award, the company secured Series B investment from a science and technology innovation fund of funds, and is in talks with partners in the UAE on cultural IP operations.

Mr. Liu Chunwei, General Manager of the Resource Extraction Division at Suzhou BOTREE Cycling Sci & Tech Co., Ltd., said his company works on lithium battery recycling and won a Global Award this year, providing strong support for its ongoing Series C financing. He also raised new IP questions in the age of artificial intelligence: the copyright boundaries of large-model training data remain unclear, and to ensure compliance the company has opted for local deployment using only its own data; how to establish originality for results generated with the assistance of large models is another issue requiring further discussion with relevant institutions.

Mr. Wang Kan, IP Director of Suzhou Raycan Technology Co., Ltd., shared lessons on the path to the award. First, in choosing a direction, fields addressing shared human challenges — life and health, medicine, artificial intelligence, energy conservation and environmental protection — enjoy an advantage. Second, the IP fundamentals must stand out: the company employs dedicated in-house patent engineers who draft and prosecute all its applications, with patents filed over the past three years averaging more than 35 claims and 25,000 characters of description each. He highlighted the mentorship program attached to the WIPO Global Awards, noting that "the award is only a starting point" and that mentors played an important role in matching resources and helping the company close cross-border deals.

Ms. Zhou Min, Head of Public Affairs at Shanghai Westwell Technology Co., Ltd., said that when the company won the award in 2023 its business covered 18 countries and regions; today it reaches 30 countries and regions and 200 customers, with AI and autonomous driving technologies serving logistics clients across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. She described how the company's in-house IP team uses WIPO's online databases to search PCT applications and make preliminary FTO assessments, reducing the cost of external services, and urged enterprises to file trademarks abroad early to guard against bad-faith registration. Overseas clients place great weight on brand endorsement, she said: "Once you have the WIPO Global Award, they naturally see you as a Chinese company that plays by international rules."

Ms. Hu Qinming, IP Director of Moon (Guangzhou) Biotech Co., Ltd., said the company maintains a large-scale microbial strain resource library, with applications spanning health and pharmaceuticals, agriculture, industry, cosmetics and food. A WIPO training platform course on "business cases and IP portfolios" changed her understanding of IP, she said, shifting it from the static notion of "owning high-quality IP" to the dynamic concept of "IP control" — creating room to advance or retreat in commercial terms. The company's IP work is now overseen directly by its CEO; cash flow generated from IP has exceeded RMB 70 million, and its biotechnology has helped 14 traditional chemical manufacturers transition to biomanufacturing.