Huawei’s suing Samsung over patents

Huawei has filed a claim against Samsung in the USA and China for infringing 11 of its patents. The claim is that Samsung has been ‘imprinting, selling and offering for sale a substantial volume of standard-compliant products that use Huawei’s SEP technology without a license,’ according to Wired.

In a statement, Ding Jianxing, president of Huawei’s Intellectual Property Rights Department, said:

“We hope Samsung will … stop infringing our patents and get the necessary license from Huawei, and work together with Huawei to jointly drive the industry forward. Huawei believes that industry players should work together to push the industry forward through open, joint innovation. While respecting others’ patents, we will also protect our own.”

Huawei has said some of those patents are Frand (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) patents which are offered to anyone with a licence as long as they agree to a non-excessive compensation.

The full nature of the patents has not been fully revealed but it has been said that most of them are for 4G technology in their use in mobile phones. Most of this patented technology has reportedly been used in the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones. Huawei has listed 27 other Samsung devices have used their technology.

A spokesperson for Samsung has said, “We will thoroughly review the complaint and take appropriate action to defend Samsung’s business interests.” 

However, ‘Huawei’s intellectual property chief indicated it was seeking permission to use some of Samsung’s technologies in return rather than seeking a payment’, according to the BBC.