Google and Tencent sign long-term agreement. In a bid to give the US technology company a way to access the Chinese market where many of its products and services are unavailable, Google and Tencent have signed a long-term agreement to cross-license patents on a massive range of products and technologies as well.
Both the companies will be free to access each other’s patent portfolios, with neither party having ability to sue the other one for infringing patents — a factor the duo said would be speeding up development by removal of the legal risks.
Both the companies, (Google and Tencent) also held out the potential for technology collaborations in the future. Neither company has disclose the financial details of the arrangement.
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The US group has an ever increasing hardware and ad business in China, despite its search engine being blocked since the year 2010 after the company was pulled out of the country due to the conflicts with authorities over censorship. During the current week it was revealed that the company had quietly opened a 3rd office in Shenzhen, the former fishing village located near Hong Kong where the companies Tencent and Huawei are also based.
Google also has recently opened its 1st artificial intelligence lab in China.
In the past, the US tech group has signed quite similar deals including with Samsung and LG of South Korea. However this is its 1st such kind of agreement in China.
“By working together on agreements such as this, tech companies can focus on building better products and services for their users,” says Google’s head of patents “Mike Lee”.
Sam Xu, deputy general counsel & head of intellectual property at Tencent, adds that we are pleased to advance the collaboration between the two leading tech companies.
Chinese companies are very very big holders of international patents. As per the data from the World Intellectual Property Organisation, Chinese inventors has made 43,000 international patent apps in the year 2016 and the country is poised to become in the world the largest user of the international patent system.
Tencent is dominating the internet market in the country with a variety of services spanning gaming, social media and shopping. Its products are not doing directly.
Alongwith the tech giant Alibaba that is its main rival in China, Tencent has become the more active in the international deals & partnerships over the previous year.
Earlier in the current month it formed a wide-ranging digital partnership to develop games, and online videos as well as a social media network for children in China with “Lego” that is the Danish toymaker.
