On September 13, Huawei and Xiaomi announced they reached a global patent cross-licensing agreement that covers multiple communications technologies including 5G.

Earlier this year, the patent dispute between the two parties attracted widespread attention in the industry. In February this year, the China Intellectual Property News published the article "Announcement on the Acceptance of Administrative Rulings on Major Patent Infringement Disputes" showing that the CNIPA accepted the administrative ruling on patent infringement disputes filed by Huawei against Xiaomi in January.

The four patents involved in the ruling are "Method and device for sending control signaling", "Method, base station and user device for feeding back ACK/NACK information during carrier aggregation", "A method and terminal for obtaining panoramas", "A lock screen method and mobile terminal”. Among these, the first two patents involve 4G/LTE technology, which is a technology in the wireless communications field and belongs to standard essential patents (SEP, standard essential patent). The latter two patents involve mobile phone cameras and unlocking technology and are non-SEP patents.

At that time, Xiaomi responded in public that the two parties were actively negotiating on patent licensing. "Both of them believe that intellectual property licensing and cooperation are conducive to promoting innovation and public interests and hold that mediation is an effective channel to help achieve licensing. While continuing active negotiation, both parties seek to use diversified mediation mechanisms to assist in reaching an agreement."

However, Xiaomi subsequently initiated invalidation requests for the 4 patents involved. As of now, public information shows that the CNIPA has made decisions on 4 invalid declarations, confirming that the patent rights are maintained as valid.

As one of the world's largest patent holders, Huawei has signed nearly 200 bilateral licensing agreements. In addition, over 350 companies have obtained Huawei patent licenses through the patent pool. What Huawei paid for cumulative patent licensing fees in history is approximately 3 times the licensing revenue. In 2022, Huawei's patent licensing revenue was 560 million dollars.

At the 2023 Innovation and Intellectual Property Forum held in July this year, Huawei announced its patent licensing rates for mobile phones, Wi-Fi, and the Internet of Things. Among these, Huawei has set a licensing rate ceiling of US$1.5 and US$2.5 for 4G and 5G mobile phones respectively; a licensing rate of US$0.5 for Wi-Fi 6 consumer devices; and for equipment with Internet of Things technology as its core, Huawei sets a licensing rate of 1% of the net selling price, with a maximum rate of no more than US$0.75; and for devices enhancing connectivity through the Internet of Things, the licensing rate is US$0.3–1.

From 21st Century Business Herald

September 13th, 2023