Nokia sues Huawei for patent infringement

With the increasing expansion of the smartphone market, the patent lawsuits initiated by the communications giants against mobile phone companies are becoming more and more frequent. According to Nanjing Huaxun, in 2016, Huawei began to collect patent fees from Apple. In May and July, Huawei Group and Huawei Terminal Company sued Samsung twice in a row, involving patents extending from communication protocols to mobile phone software development technology. In July, Huawei filed a lawsuit against T-Mobile.

Experts from Nanjing Huaxun said, "Nowadays, competition among large international companies and multinational companies is very fierce, and there are more and more intellectual property disputes. This reflects that intellectual property has become an important means of competition and a powerful weapon for enterprises in contemporary society. Intellectual property is a kind of exclusive right in law, and with intellectual property rights, we have control over market share. Now many enterprises see the importance of intellectual property rights to enterprise competition, attach great importance to intellectual property rights, and regard intellectual property rights as tactics and means to compete for market control."

A few days ago, Nokia filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Huawei, accusing Huawei of infringing three of its patents involving 4G LTE communications, rejecting its proposed patent licensing agreement, and continuing to use its patents. Huawei responded that there had been a cross-licensing agreement between Huawei and Nokia, and Huawei wanted to keep the terms of the updated agreement in line with the previous terms, but Nokia rejected the proposal. Huawei will therefore take the necessary measures to defend itself against the allegations made by Nokia Networks.

In the indictment, Nokia explained to the court the reason for the lawsuit: Nokia and Huawei have had many discussions on the patent issues of both parties, but Huawei is not willing to pay Nokia a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory patent license fee. In explaining the reasons for the lawsuit, Nokia wrote: in addition to licensing negotiations, Nokia even provided a proposal for arbitration, hoping to determine the appropriate license rate through arbitration, and even avoid patent litigation between Huawei and T-Mobile, but unfortunately Huawei has not accepted this proposal so far.

Earlier, Huawei filed a patent lawsuit against wireless carrier T-Mobile in the United States, accusing it of infringing its own patent rights. In fact, the real purpose of Nokia's lawsuit against Huawei is to help its customers T-Mobile fight Huawei's patent lawsuit, Huawei said.

Huawei said that Nokia Networks had asked to join Huawei's lawsuit against T-Mobile USA and merged the patent claim with Huawei's lawsuit against T-Mobile USA. Because the patent that Nokia Networks sued Huawei and Huawei sued T-Mobile were completely different, the court ordered Nokia Networks to separate its claim from the patent lawsuit between Huawei and T-Mobile.

Huawei's products include the Nexus 6p, Honor 5x, P8 lite, GX8, Ascend Mate 2, SnapTo and MediapadT1 8.0 Pro. These products cover almost all of Huawei's main models except the newly released P9. If Huawei is sued, it will seriously affect Huawei's terminal sales in the United States.

As for the patent lawsuit with T-Mobile, according to Huawei's response, Huawei has invested US $40 billion in research and development and related intellectual property development in the past 10 years. Huawei only protects the achievements made by these huge investments.

In addition to lawsuits with Nokia and T-mobile, Huawei has made headlines for its recent lawsuits with the communications industry giants. On May 25, 2016, Huawei announced that it would file an intellectual property lawsuit against South Korea Samsung in China and the United States at the same time. In the lawsuit, Huawei asked Samsung to claim 80 million yuan for its intellectual property infringement.

Huawei's lawsuit against Samsung mainly involves high-value patents of communication technology and software used by Samsung mobile phones. For the purpose of the lawsuit, Huawei said it hoped Samsung would respect Huawei's research and development and intellectual property achievements, stop patent infringement without a license, and retain the right to compensation.

According to Feng Xiaoqing, "Huawei attaches great importance to technological innovation and has achieved good results. And Huawei attaches great importance to intellectual property rights and has accumulated a lot of experience in intellectual property protection, so the odds of winning are still great."

Looking back on the past, Chinese manufacturers rarely take the initiative to attack patent property rights cases in the international market. Recently, Huawei has successively sued Samsung and T-Moblie, which can be described as a sensational case in patent litigation. The global mobile phone market is becoming saturated, and the pattern and competitive focus of the mobile phone industry have also changed. As we all know, only one smart phone may involve thousands of patents. Patents have become a powerful weapon for the mobile phone industry to seize the market and curb competitors. Some foresighted domestic mobile phone manufacturers have stepped up research and development efforts to speed up the strategic layout of patents.

In the ten years from 2004 to 2014, Huawei's patent applications have grown rapidly. Data shows that Huawei's investment in R & D in 2014 exceeded the sum of nearly 400 A- share companies. In 2015, the R & D investment of US $9.2 billion has also become the confidence for Huawei to dare to confront international giants such as Samsung, Nokia and T-mobile.

"Some domestic enterprises have insufficient awareness of innovation and intellectual property rights. They are very passive when encountering such disputes, and it is easy to lose in international intellectual property litigation." Nanjing Huaxun said that Huawei's series of lawsuits have inspired these companies. Companies must have strong innovation and innovative results, and use intellectual property rights to protect the results in order to be invincible.