On May 25, Chinese tech giant Huawei filed patent infringement lawsuits against South Korean mobile phone rival Samsung in China and the United States. Huawei requested Samsung to respect its intellectual property, stop infringing its patents and compensate accordingly.

Samsung responded in a statement saying "We will thoroughly review the complaint and take appropriate action to defend Samsung's business interests."

According to the indictment filed by Huawei in the U.S, Samsung has violated 11 U.S patents it holds related to LTE and 2G and 3G technology.

Liwenyu, director of intellectual property center of China Academy of Telecommunication Research (CATR), who analyzed the above- mentioned 11 patents said in an interview with CIP News," these patents are filed from 2011 to 2014 and are granted successively. They cover core network, physical layer and high- level signaling processing of LTE technology and most of them are related to 3GPP Rel-8 of LTE. It is worth noting that the 11 patents have over 300 cognate appplications covering more than 100 countries and regions."

As a late-comer in smartphone market, why Huawei launched an attack on Samsung whose market share topped the world? We may find the answer in the reply by Huawei to CIP News,"We hope Samsung will stop infringing our patents and get the necessary licence from Huawei, and work together with Huawei to jointly drive the industry forward. Litigation is a legal remedy to solve IP disputes and we hope to work with Samsung to find a better solution."

"What is behind litigation is business and what is behind the case is interest. On the world map featuring smartphone market share and patent layout, although Huawei has been already among top 3, there is still a gap between Huawei and other leading companies such as Samsung and Apple," said Taoxinliang, dean of school of IP at Shanghai University. He indicated that at the backdrop of signing cross- licensing agreements with Apple, Huawei hopes to sign similar agreements with Samsung and overtake it in sales volume of products.

Samsung made a quick response to Huawei's litigation. What strategy it will take attracts the industry’s wide attention. What would Huawei be responded if Samsung countercharge?

Liwenyu analyzed the possible strategy that Samsung will adopt."Samsung may file request for patent invalidation on patents involved in the case and file patent infringement lawsuits in the U.S and South Korea. Moreover, Samsung will likely reach cross-licensing agreements with Huawei based on its own standard essential patents in a bid to pay less or no licence fees." He added, the two sides will possibly sue each other with unfair competition and abuse of market dominant position.

From Samsung's response, there is big chance for it to launch patent infringement litigation against Huawei. Taoxinliang suggested that Huawei handle the patent case in a quick manner in order to reach cross- licensing agreements with its rival. However,the patent wars between them will last for a long time. Huawei should adopt corresponding litigation strategies according to the rival's response.

"In terms of the high-tech smartphone industry, patent litigation is a planned, organized and large-scale business practice across countries and regions. The intention of patent litigation is not to charge only one company for patent license fees." Liwenyu believed when Chinese companies become larger in scale and more competent in IP, they will seek to get a reasonable return through IP license.

(by Feng Fei)

(Source: China IP News)