According to latest report from 21CN, recently ZTE and Huawei have sent lawyer letters to domestic mobile phone vendors including Xiaomi, OPPO, BBK and others, accusing them of infringing the patents on WCDMA.
Reporters have inquired Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo and other mobile phone vendors, but they all said "don’t know about that". However, an informed source told the reporters, "ZTE is serious about it, almost the famous domestic mobile phone vendors all have received ZTE's lawyer letters."
ZTE replied: "ZTE is one of the vendors with most abundant patent accumulation in domestic, we respect the actions for intellectual property protection, which are conducive to the healthy development of device industry. The other contents are confidential, it’s inconvenient to be released."
Huawei also gave no response on the "lawyer letter". However, Huawei said: "Huawei attaches great importance to the protection of our own patents, on the other hand, we also respect the intellectual property of others."
A famous patent lawyer told the reporter: "Now it is just a lawyer letter. We can’t predict how it will develop in the current environment." However, the lawyer said: "patent is a powerful competitive tool, whether on the market competition, or to find differential development ways, if mobile phone vendors want to step ahead, they have to get over the hump." He said: "The two sides will negotiate for some time. If the other domestic mobile phone vendors cannot reach an agreement with ZTE and Huawei, they will certainly be suited, but it is still unclear about which vendor and when will this start."
The China Patent Announcement on the website of State Intellectual Property Office shows that the invention authorizations of Coolpad, OPPO, Xiaomi, Vivo, GiONEE and Meizu are 334, 103, 10, 7, 7 and 4, respectively, the invention authorization of Lenovo is 554, but the acquired Motorola has about 2300 invention patent authorizations, which makes up for the short board of Lenovo. In contrast, Huawei and ZTE have got 22169 and 14493 patent authorizations, respectively.
Huawei mentioned that in a reply to the reporter: by the end of 31th August, 2014, Huawei has applied about 12,000 invention patents associated with devices and over 1000 appearances patents. At the same time, it has got about 1600 China patent authorizations, over 500 overseas patent authorizations in Europe, USA and others. At present, the patent application of Huawei consumer business is increasing with a steady annual growth of 1300 pieces.
Special researcher in Intellectual Property Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, Li Junhui, believes: "ZTE and Huawei have deep accumulation in the communication field, so the patent conflicts between them and other mobile phone vendors are mainly related with the basic communication patents."
However, Li Junhui says, "the domestic mobile phone vendors are playing recriminations at most, rarely leading to litigation, most of the vendors will work this out by negotiation, in reaching a licensing agreement or cross licensing agreement etc.."
General Manager of ZTE device strategy development department Lv Qianhao said in a reply to the reporter: "ZTE feels optimistic about the strengthened protection of intellectual property rights and charge legitimate patent fee on domestic mobile phones, which contributes to the innovation and sustainable development of the industry chains. ZTE supports multiple cooperation forms such as patent fee, patent authorization, cooperative development, leasing and others."
However,Xiaomi denied the news and said on Weibo yesterday that it have confirmed with company lawyers and they have not received lawyer letters from ZTE and Huawei.