Patents are one of the biggest assets for any technology company and last month, Huawei decided to retaliate to the US trade ban by demanding Verizon to pay over $1 billion in total as fees for over 230 patents. Now, two US senators want to block Huawei from buying or selling US patents by introducing a new bill in the country.
The WSJ reports that the bill essentially seeks to give power to the US federal government to stop companies listed on its trade blacklist from buying, selling, or exclusively licensing US patents. It would give the government the authority to step in any domestic case relating to patent infringement. Further, the bill will force the blacklisted company to notify the Justice Department as well as the Patent and Trademark office of such a case and provide details on the infringement, financial implications, and damages demanded.
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The bill is clearly aimed at Huawei who is currently in the government’s crosshairs. Naturally, the Chinese telecommunications giant is not happy with this bill. The WSJ report adds a statement from Andy Purdy, chief security officer for Huawei Technologies USA – “If (this bill is) adopted, it could have severe negative ramifications by creating global mistrust of the U.S. and its ability in upholding, as well as safeguarding intellectual property rights.”
While Trump’s comments from the G20 summit had eased some of the tensions between the US and China, there are still a lot of new developments worsening the situation. For example, US-based Cape, a cloud platform vendor for drone telepresence and data management, abruptly stopped support for the popular drone maker, DJI as well as other Chinese drone makers. On the other hand, a recent editorial for the state-run Globaltimes argues that China could anytime leverage its position in rare earth minerals to pressurize the US.
Overall, it looks like this trade war is far from over and we’ll see a lot more developments in the coming months.
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