In the latest edition of the "China's 500 Most Valuable Brands", Mengniu ranked 92nd with a brand value of RMB 69.443 billion. Half a month ago, during the “June 18 E-Commerce Festival”, Mengniu secured the top spot in nationwide online sales of liquid milk. Mengniu has also been featured in Rabobank's "Global Dairy Top 20" list for ten consecutive years, ranking among the world's top ten in 2020.
Mengniu's brand and products are gaining increasing popularity. At the same time, Mengniu continues to ramp up investment in innovation to produce more high-quality products that meet the diverse needs of consumers. To protect its research achievements and provide further support for R&D, Mengniu once again released a tender for intellectual property services in 2017. Sunshine IP emerged as the winner of that tender, becoming Mengniu Group's intellectual property service provider.
Since the collaboration between Sunshine IP and Mengniu began in 2017, over the past nearly five years, Sunshine IP has filed nearly 500 new patent applications on behalf of Mengniu, covering multiple product areas including liquid milk, ice cream, milk powder, and cheese, achieving outstanding results.
In the initial phase of the collaboration, Mengniu primarily entrusted Sunshine IP with individual utility model patent applications. Sunshine IP's patent agents conducted detailed search and analysis for each proposal before providing application recommendations. Sunshine IP's diligent and pragmatic service attitude earned recognition from Mengniu. Mengniu subsequently began entrusting a large number of invention patent applications to Sunshine IP. Concurrently, Mengniu also commissioned Sunshine IP for services such as infringement analysis, patent stability analysis, patent invalidation litigation, and patent operation. Sunshine IP is a full-chain intellectual property service provider; in addition to patent applications, Sunshine IP has years of service experience in patent dispute resolution, analytical consulting, and investment and operation. This was also a significant reason why Mengniu Group deepened its partnership with Sunshine IP.
As the cooperation on patent application services deepened, the model of "case-by-case entrustment" for patent agency services could no longer meet Mengniu's needs. To better translate R&D achievements into patents, Mengniu and Sunshine IP gradually explored a completely new model for patent services.
For key R&D projects, patent mining meetings were convened, bringing together corporate inventors, technical experts, IP management personnel, and patent agents from the agency to discuss from multiple perspectives, further exploring, expanding, extending, and refining product technologies. This approach enabled Mengniu to achieve more comprehensive protection for its products and technologies.
In 2020, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, offline on-site exchanges could not proceed smoothly. To ensure timely conversion of scientific research and technological innovation achievements into patents, Mengniu and Sunshine IP moved offline exchange meetings online. In the first half of 2020 alone, the two parties conducted five sessions of patent mining, and carried out technical reviews of 43 R&D achievements. Typically, before the exchange meetings, Mengniu would provide basic introductions to the technical solutions, and Sunshine IP's patent agents would thoroughly understand the solutions one by one and conduct prior art searches and analyses to ensure full familiarity with the technical solutions and prior art during the online discussions. During online discussions, both parties would conduct comprehensive exchanges on technical solutions, prior art, application scenarios, and upstream and downstream industrial chains before formulating reasonable application strategies to achieve effective filings. In 2020, the number of patent applications Sunshine IP filed on behalf of Mengniu increased by 30% compared to the previous year.
For Sunshine IP, the Mengniu case is not an isolated one. Many clients collaborating with Sunshine IP started with a single service, and, impressed by Sunshine IP's professional service capabilities and dedicated service attitude, subsequently entrusted Sunshine IP with more business. These clients include Gree Electric Appliances, Meituan, Sanju Environmental Protection, and Tsinghua University, among others.
Sunshine IP consistently prioritizes its clients. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when in-person operations were not possible, Sunshine IP's patent agents worked remotely to avoid delays in patent applications, ensuring timely filing of clients’ patents. In 2020, Sunshine IP's domestic patent application business maintained steady growth, with approximately 8,500 patent applications filed, representing an increase of about 18% compared to the same period in 2019.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Sunshine IP also provided numerous clients with various patent portfolio planning and mining services through a combination of online and offline methods. In addition to participating in over 40 patent mining projects for Mengniu, Sunshine IP also participated in several patent portfolio planning projects for Gree Electric Appliances. Sunshine IP's Shenzhen service team even went to the Shenzhen "Xiaotangshan" hospital site to provide patent mining services. Furthermore, Sunshine IP's patent agents conducted multiple patent application-related training sessions for enterprises, assisting clients in developing innovative thinking and protecting their innovation achievements.
Currently, Sunshine IP's domestic agency department has over 80 patent agents, of whom more than 70% hold master's degrees or higher. Nearly half of the agents have over five years of professional experience, and several are senior patent agents, former patent examiners, or patent litigation attorneys with over ten years of experience. Sunshine IP has always emphasized patent application quality. During the drafting stage, patent applications undergo review by designated reviewers with strict quality control. In addition, Sunshine IP established a quality inspection system early on, where the Quality Management Department conducts random checks on completed cases and holds quality review meetings to discuss quality issues. For problems identified during drafting and quality inspection, specialized training sessions are conducted to improve patent agents' professional capabilities and standards.
