United Nations UNECE Resource Management Week 2025 event in Geneva, Switzerland

Professor Rob Perrons, QUT was recently honoured to present new evidence about the global critical minerals industry last week at the United Nations UNECE Resource Management Week 2025 event in Geneva, Switzerland. Specifically, Rob presented data shining a light on China’s dominant position with regards to intellectual property ownership and technological know-how in the mining domain. He began by explaining that the mining sector has changed very quickly over the past 25 years or so insofar as it is far more technology-intensive than it used to be simply because more science and engineering is required to access ore bodies as they get deeper, smaller, and in lower concentrations than in the past.  He then pointed out that Chinese patent applications rose dramatically between 2000-2019 such that they now have a very dominant IP position in several parts of the mining industry.  The global critical minerals market changed significantly at around the half-way point during that 20-year timeframe when the U.S. requested WTO dispute settlement consultations with China regarding export restraints maintained by China on various forms of rare earths, tungsten, and molybdenum.  WTO ruled against China in 2013, precipitating a kind of Cold War in the critical minerals domain that resulted in China getting far more aggressive about IP in the industry.  But China has been selective about which parts of the mining value network they are focusing on.  Some upstream areas such as blasting are less of a priority.  However, other areas like automation are now overwhelmingly dominated by Chinese patents.

This project is a team effort involving Saleem H. Ali at the University of Delaware, Alica Daly at WIPO in Switzerland, Yongguang Zhu at the China University of Geosciences, and Shahzad Alvi at QUT.

Professor Perrons (middle and in the blue suit) speaking at the event.