Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) finally completed its acquisition of Motorola’s networking activities on Friday, but Huawei, whose lawsuits had helped postpone the event, was already onto a more surprising legal attack – against compatriot ZTE. The smaller of the two Chinese giants promptly hit back with its own countersuits, but is already embroiled in a tit-for-tat round of patent disputes with Ericsson, indicating the intensifying competition in the wireless space, and the players’ desperation to gain a strong IPR foothold in LTE. The fights for market share, and for patents share, are intertwined, and both will define the wireless infrastructure market as it takes on the LTE challenge.
Huawei chose Europe to file its complaints, which focus on LTE and, specifically, on mobile broadband data cards – ironically an area where the European Commission (EC) has been probing the firms after accusations of dumping. ZTE hit back a day later with a lawsuit in China, citing LTE patents and demanding compensation. ZTE said it would also take action outside China.
Huawei said its rival had failed to heed various “cease and desist” letters and it had been compelled to file suit, choosing the favorite European center for such actions, Germany, plus France and Hungary. "Huawei was compelled to initiate this action in order to protect our innovations and registered intellectual property in Europe," said Song Liuping, chief legal officer, in a statement. "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,” he continued, stressing that patents were “among Huawei’s most valuable assets,” the company having spent $2.5bn on R&D last year and a further $222m on patent licensing fees for third-party technologies.
Huawei’s high-profile European case, focused on 3G and 4G modems and data cards, was settled last year when it came to an agreement with Belgian specialist vendor Option. However, there could still be wider EC investigations of claims of dumping and price fixing.