GLOBAL: Huawei sues ZTE over alleged patent infringement

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. has filed lawsuits in Germany, France, and Hungary against ZTE Corp. for patent and trade mark infringement, alleging ZTE is infringing on Huawei’s patents for data card and LTE technologies, and using a Huawei-registered trademark on some of its data card products.
“Huawei was compelled to initiate this action in order to protect our innovations and registered intellectual property in Europe. Our objective is to stop the illegal use of Huawei’s intellectual property and resolve this dispute through negotiation so that our technology is used in a lawful manner,” said Huawei’s Chief Legal Officer, Dr. Song Liuping in a prepared statement.
Huawei said it has tried to sign cross-patent licensing agreements with ZTE and has written cease-and-desist letters to no avail. ZTE could not be reached for comment at press time.
Intellectual property rights-related lawsuits related to LTE are likely to heat up as operators around the world adopt the technology with huge financial stakes. Earlier this month, Ericsson and ZTE filed litigation against each other around GSM and W-CDMA technology IPR. Motorola Solutions and Huawei just recently dropped all lawsuits against each other, agreeing to settle out of court, allowing Motorola to proceed with the sale of its CDMA assets to Nokia Siemens Networks.