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19 January 2018Patents

Google signs patent licensing deal with Tencent in China

Google has entered into a cross-patent licensing deal with China-based Tencent Holdings in an effort to expand its reach in China.

The agreement will cover a broad range of products and will create opportunities for future collaboration on technology. Google’s search engine, alongside some of its other products, are currently blocked in China.

Tencent is a Chinese internet provider, offering online communication and gaming platforms such as QQ, QQ Instant Messenger, WeChat and QQ Games. According to Tencent, the average monthly use of QQ as of March 31, 2017 was 861 million.

Mike Lee, Google’s head of patents, reportedly said that such agreements allow tech companies to focus on building better products and delivering better services to their users.

This isn’t the first time that Google has signed a cross-licensing patent agreement.

As reported by WIPR in 2014, it entered into a partnership with Samsung to cover a range of technologies and business areas.

At the time, Google’s general counsel for patents Allen Lo commented: “By working together on agreements like this, companies can reduce the potential for litigation and focus instead on innovation.”

The agreement was designed to create a path for more in-depth collaboration on research and development into products and technologies.

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