PurpleVine IP Hosts Dedicated Forum at CIPAC 2026: SEPs Now a Battleground for China's Global Players

Source:IPRdaily

BEIJING, September 8, 2026 — PurpleVine IP Group ("PurpleVine IP") hosted its dedicated roundtable forum at the 15th China Intellectual Property Annual Conference (CIPAC 2026), held at Room 244, 2nd Floor, Phase II, China National Convention Center in Beijing. As a Pioneer Partner of this year's conference, PurpleVine convened the session under the theme "The Battleground: Global SEP Disputes, Licensing and Value Realization," featuring seven keynote presentations, a report launch and a closing roundtable discussion. More than one hundred industry professionals attended, with the room remaining full through to the final session.

The forum "The Battleground: Global SEP Disputes, Licensing and Value Realization"

The forum was chaired by Jieyun Cai, Project Director at PurpleVine IP. He noted that standard essential patents (SEPs) had long carried an air of exclusivity, treated as a contest among a handful of large corporations. "But over the past few years, everyone has felt the shift. SEPs have moved well beyond that small circle and now connect a far wider range of market participants. SEPs have become a battleground no one can afford to ignore."

Seven Keynotes Spanning the Full SEP Lifecycle from Cultivation to Monetization

Seven speakers from industry and professional practice delivered keynote presentations during the first half of the forum.

Wendy (Wanyi) Yuan, Senior Manager at PurpleVine IP, contrasted two cases with sharply divergent damages outcomes to argue that a patent's value as an SEP is determined long before it reaches court. "A patent that can be granted is not necessarily a patent that can fight." Wendy Gu, Chief Legal Officer at Luxshare Tech, drew on three stages of her career — patent examiner in China, US patent attorney, and in-house counsel — to describe the in-house lawyer's core role as that of a translator. Vivian Wang, Licensing Director at PurpleVine IP, focused on the phase after an agreement is signed — reporting, payment and audit response — noting a persistent industry tendency to prioritize signing over performance.

Keynote presentation session

Frank Jeng, Senior Advisor at PurpleVine IP, opened with the recent global settlement between Transsion and Ericsson before tracing fifteen years of contest over global SEP pricing authority. "In SEP litigation, the endgame is the rate — but the process is almost always about injunctions." Bo Tian, IP Director at Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, examined the emerging tool of interim licensing in automotive SEP disputes and how courts in different jurisdictions have responded to it. Hideki Sanatake, Managing Executive Officer and Group Executive, Corporate Intellectual Property and Legal Headquarters at Canon Inc., joined by video with the message that "there is no global without local," outlining Canon's path toward what he termed a virtual global IP headquarters. Xiaoyong Tang, CEO of Epoch Innovation, noted that 6G is expected to reach commercial deployment in 2029 and enter specification freeze in the first quarter of 2028, leaving companies a window of roughly eighteen months — meaning positioning decisions must be made before the standard freezes.

Launch of the Global Next-Generation Core Technology Standards Landscape Report

Following the keynote sessions, PurpleVine and Epoch Innovation jointly launched the Global Next-Generation Core Technology Standards Landscape Report. The report covers three standards tracks — 3GPP on 6G, IEEE on Wi-Fi, and JVET on next-generation video coding — and is updated on a "1+2+10" cycle. It aims to convert on-site observations, meeting records and market analysis gathered by standards researchers into a forward-looking advisory resource for decisions made before the fact rather than after.

Xiaoyong Tang, CEO of Epoch Innovation; Liuyang Yang, General Manager of PurpleVine IP's China Market Center; Frank Jeng, Senior Advisor at PurpleVine IP; and Xiaopeng Ke, Director of Patent Legal Affairs at Alibaba Group, took the stage together to mark the launch.

Launch of the Global Next-Generation Core Technology Standards Landscape Report

Closing Roundtable: Patent Wars, Patent Pools and China's Choice

The forum closed with a roundtable discussion titled "Patent Wars and Patent Pools: China's Choice Under the New Global Licensing Order," moderated by Rebecca Yan, Vice President of PurpleVine IP. She was joined by Xiaopeng Ke, Director of Patent Legal Affairs at Alibaba Group; Yi Li, Senior Consultant at the IP Operation Center for the Information and Communications Industry, China Mobile Design Institute; Haoxuan Zheng, Manager of the IP Department at Desay SV Automotive; and Amy Pu, Project Director at PurpleVine IP. Over nearly an hour, the panel addressed emerging trends in licensing operations, the choice between pool and bilateral licensing, and the options available to implementers.

Panelists agreed that neither pools nor bilateral licensing is inherently superior; the right path depends on industry characteristics, the concentration of rights holders, and a company's own bargaining leverage. They also called on pool administrators to provide greater transparency in essentiality assessment and greater predictability in rate design. For Chinese implementers still in a defensive position, the panel's shared view was that SEPs are best understood as a cost of market access and should be factored in far earlier — and that even companies without SEPs of their own can secure better terms by participating actively in how the rules are set.

Roundtable discussion "Patent Wars and Patent Pools: China's Choice Under the New Global Licensing Order"

In closing, Rebecca Yan said she expects Chinese companies to hold a stronger voice and make a greater contribution on the international stage as their innovation capacity and IP holdings continue to grow.

About PurpleVine IP Group

Founded in Shenzhen, China, PurpleVine IP Group is a high-end intellectual property service provider rooted in China with an international outlook. The firm delivers full-chain, one-stop IP solutions spanning global patent portfolio development, analytics and advisory, licensing negotiation support, and dispute resolution. Its team brings together specialists from leading technology companies and international institutions, combining diverse legal and technical backgrounds with deep industry experience to provide practical, efficient IP services. PurpleVine operates across major IP hubs in the Asia-Pacific region and serves clients in the United States, Europe and other active IP jurisdictions worldwide.

Source:IPRdaily