Recently, ZTE Corporation (Shenzhen: 000063 Hong Kong: 0763), China´s largest listed telecommunications manufacturer and leading wireless solutions provider, has been ranked again in the "Top Ten Winners of Chinese Patent Gold Medal in 2004" by virtue of its scientific and stringent patent management system, industry-leading patent quality and a multitude of innovative patents. This ranking list of domestic enterprises for Chinese patents in 2004 is released by the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO). 

As a fellow member of over 40 international telecommunications standard organizations and an editor of 9 ITU and 3GPP international telecommunications standards, ZTE also is endowed with such honors as "the first winner of the Chinese patent gold medal" and "the owner of the most patents on the homemade handsets in China" for its distinguished achievements in patents and intellectual property rights. By end of 2004, ZTE´s innovation patents had climbed to over 2000, constituting 90% of the total application amount. Therein, quite a large part falls into the international patents.

"Targeting at quality instead of quantity and being guided by the market", ZTE is pleased to share its wisdom and strengths in the telecommunications field with the world. For the internal confirmation of patents, ZTE sticks to the synchronization of application and R&D by conducting in-depth analysis, comprehensive balancing and overall planning before making final confirmation, thereby greatly eliminating the application randomicity and resource wastes. For the filed patents, further appraisal should be made periodically in line with the market value and the long-term value. For the patent allocation, ZTE puts 70% of its patent resources into cutting-edge technologies and telecommunication technologies of promising market prospects, and 30% on the improvement and upgrade of the existing technologies.

In concert with the product strategy, ZTE´s patent application emphasis is given to its strategic products like 3G, NGN, Handsets and GoTa. In 2004, ZTE independently developed and launched GoTa, the world´s first digital trunking technology based on CDMA2000. To date ZTE has applied over 70 patents on GoTa, being the first Chinese manufacturer to confer the patent access to foreign vendors. In the area of handset core technology - the weakest part for most Chinese manufacturers, ZTE boasts more than 100 patents, claiming 25% of the entire patents of homemade handsets. 

ZTE has viewed the patent strategy as a competitive edge for its overseas market exploitation. In 2004, capitalizing on its patent strategy, ZTE´s GoTa system was extensively available for commercial purposes in Malaysia, which is the first time for domestic digital trunking products to be commercially used overseas. Besides, ZTE´s handsets harvested a sales of over 10 million sets for the year 2004 following an order of approximately US$100 million from the Brazilian telecommunications operator VIVO, which to date, is the biggest contract ever obtained by the Chinese handset maker in overseas markets.