In recent years, Guangzhou's Tianhe district has been actively promoting the transfer and transformation of patent achievements made by colleges and universities.

Home to many colleges and universities in Guangdong province, Tianhe had 8,203 patent grants as of the end of April, including 2,307 invention patent grants and 62 international PCT patent applications. The number of the district's invention patent grants and valid invention patents ranked first in the city.

Tianhe makes efforts to promote the transformation of patent achievements made by colleges and universities. [Photo/thnet.gov.cn]

Tianhe has launched several measures to boost its high-quality economic development, including increasing financial support for the comprehensive application of patents, as well as the subsequent transformation and application of intellectual property rights (IPR). In 2021, it awarded 6.36 million yuan ($951,418) in IPR grants.

Efforts have also been made to promote the cultivation of high-value patents in colleges and universities, hence advancing the transformation of patents.

Tianhe-based South China University of Technology (SCUT) has authorized more than 100 invention patents in the high-performance microelectronics and optoelectronic chip fields to foreign countries, including the United States and Singapore. Among them, 16 core patent portfolios were evaluated by professional appraisal institutions, with a value of 89 million yuan.

Products that applied the series of "high hetero frequency isolated broadband dual-band base station antenna array" patents, which were jointly developed by SCUT and Comba Telecom, have been sold to domestic and foreign companies like China Mobile and Britain's Vodafone, generating over 2 billion yuan of sales volume in the past three years.

In addition, Tianhe has carried out two campus high-value patent cultivation competitions. The second one was launched in July 2020, attracting 76 projects from 14 colleges, universities, as well as scientific research institutions like SCUT and South China Agricultural University.