Huawei Technologies, the China-based tech giant and the leading telecommunications equipment manufacturer, and the U.S.-based Verizon Communications have agreed to settle the lawsuits alleging patent infringement.
The settlement for the two lawsuits, details of which remain confidential, comes days after trial for one of them opened. Huawei and Verizon filed joint motions to dismiss both cases and Verizon’s counterclaims late on Sunday in two U.S. courts in Texas.
In a statement, Verizon said it was “happy with the settlement reached with Huawei involving patent lawsuits. While terms of the settlement are not being disclosed, our team did an outstanding job bringing this protracted matter to a close.” On the other hand, Huawei said in a statement it was “pleased that Verizon and Huawei reached an agreement that ends the companies’ patent litigation.”
For those who are unaware, in February last year, Huawei sued Verizon alleging that the network operator used a dozen Huawei patents without authorization in areas such as computer networking, download security, and video communications. It was seeking an unspecified amount of compensation and royalty payments.
A year prior to that, Huawei told Verizon it should pay licensing fees for use of more than 230 Huawei patents and was seeking more than $1 billion.
Huawei has been caught up in the middle of the US-China trade war and the company has been included in United States’ Entity List for more than two years now. It basically bans the company from doing business with American firms or using its technologies.
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