28 July: every seat in the press hall of Hangzhou’s Xihu State Guest House was taken. Under a blaze of flashbulbs, Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree Robotics, received the 2025 WIPO Global Award trophy from the Deputy Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization. In that instant the honor belonged not only to a nine-year-old start-up, but to an entire province. After two decades of sharpening its sword, Zhejiang finally delivered a world-stunning answer sheet on intellectual property.
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Why the “only one”?
Since its launch in 2022, the WIPO Global Award has selected no more than five winners each year from thousands of global innovators. The criteria are brutally simple: originality, patent quality, commercialisation, and social impact—all must be maxed out. In 2025 only four firms worldwide made the cut; Unitree was the sole Chinese name on the list.
The jury’s single-sentence verdict: “With three hundred high-value patents, they redefined what quadruped robots can be.”
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The “Zhejiang playbook” behind 300 patents
2.1 From 0 to 1: the patent map
In 2016, Wang Xingxing and three engineers drew the first “patent map” in a 70-m² rented flat in Hangzhou: motors, reducers, joint structures, motion-control algorithms—every node was laid out three years ahead.
“We don’t patch holes; we build skyscrapers from day one,” Wang recalls. The firm’s very first patent—“a highly integrated robot joint module”—became the DNA of every subsequent product, spawning 47 satellite patents and forming a “core-plus-constellation” cluster.
2.2 Litigation-hardened quality
In 2021 a global giant filed a Section 337 action in Texas, accusing Unitree of infringing three balance-algorithm patents. Unitree’s counterattack became textbook material: two prior in-house patents were used to invalidate the rival’s claims, forcing a full invalidation of two patents; a countersuit for malicious litigation then pushed the opponent into a cross-licensing deal.
The 18-month fight taught Unitree that “a patent is not a certificate; it’s a bullet.” Since then, 12 % of annual revenue is ploughed into patent offence and defence. Ninety-two percent of the 300 patents are invention patents, with an average of 17.3 claims—far above the industry mean.
2.3 Standards as the secret weapon
Unitree’s stealthiest move was to write its patents into standards. In 2023 the firm led the drafting of IEEE 2755-2023, “Safety Requirements for Civil Quadruped Robots”; 11 key clauses cite Unitree patents verbatim. Every quadruped robot sold worldwide now potentially embeds Zhejiang IP.
The WIPO report noted: “By turning SEPs into technology diffusion, Unitree has flipped the Chinese paradigm from selling products to selling rules.”
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The hidden 20-year thread of “IP-strong Zhejiang”
On the same day the provincial IP bureau released a set of numbers:
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451 000 valid invention patents; per-capita ownership soared from 0.8 in 2005 to 68.4 in 2025.
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4.916 million registered trademarks, No. 1 in China for 22 straight years.
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189 national IP-demonstration enterprises, again the national top.
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Patent-pledge financing topped RMB 120 billion in 2024, fifty-fold the 2015 level.
Behind the data is what locals call the “three-three system”:
3.1 Three “firsts in China”
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2005: first province to make “patent strategy” a governor-level KPI.
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2015: first provincial IP exchange centre.
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2020: first provincial “IP Powerhouse Outline 2021-2035”.
3.2 Three “90 %s”
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90 % of R&D spend comes from private firms.
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90 % of patent applications are filed by companies, not universities.
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90 % of IP disputes are settled by administrative mediation.
3.3 Three “RMB 10-billion projects”
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High-value patent cultivation (RMB 13.6 billion, 2018-2025).
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IP-pledge risk-compensation fund.
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Patent-navigation pilots in 15 sectors, from digital economy to biomedicine.
Unitree was among the first 20 pilot firms of the high-value patent programme. A bespoke “patent task-force” of one examiner, one attorney and one industry expert camped inside the firm for three years, dissecting a motor-cooling idea into nine patents—three of which later became key bonus points in the WIPO review.
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The “Zhejiang answer” beyond robots
On stage, the WIPO Deputy Director-General revealed a detail: 34 Unitree patents have already been licensed to 23 firms in 11 countries, including two Fortune 500 giants. “This is not mere tech export,” he said, “this is an ‘IP-enabled Zhejiang innovation community’.”
The spill-over is already visible:
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Geely uses Unitree’s dynamic-balance algorithm for autonomous-vehicle chassis control.
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Hikvision adapted the low-noise joint modules for security-patrol robots.
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CATL tapped the high-energy-density battery-management tech for energy-storage systems.
Lan Jianping of Zhejiang Development and Planning Institute sums it up: “Unitree’s value is not how many robots it sells, but how its IP welds Zhejiang’s industrial chain together.”
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Epilogue: the next stop from “Made in Zhejiang” to “Intelligent Zhejiang”
Before the curtain fell, Wang Xingxing flashed a slide: among 120 new filings in 2025, 43 target “next-gen humanoid robots”—bionic tendon-drive systems, multimodal perception-decision frameworks, etc. The applications are being filed not only in China but simultaneously in the US, EU, Japan, South Korea, and via PCT in Brazil, India and other emerging markets.
“The first 20 years of Zhejiang’s IP quest answered ‘do we have it?’ The next 20 must answer ‘are we strong?’” said the provincial market-regulation chief. “Unitree has already shown the way: back global technological leadership with global patent portfolios, and tell China’s innovation story in the language of IP.”
From 2005 to 2025, Zhejiang turned intellectual property from a fringe issue into a core strategy. From 2016 to 2025, Unitree turned 300 patents into a global benchmark.
When the WIPO trophy is placed in the glass case of Zhejiang’s IP Expo Center, the caption reads: “Not the finish line, but the starting point for the next journey of Intelligent Zhejiang.”
