HONG KONG: Huawei pegged its patent talks with US carrier Verizon as “common” business activity and said such negotiations should not be politicised, days after a senator filed legislation to prevent the Chinese firm from seeking damages in US courts.
The company has demanded that Verizon pay licensing fees for more than 230 of the telecoms equipment maker’s patents and is seeking over $1 billion, a person has said, against a background of mounting US-China trade tensions.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio has described Huawei’s demand as “baseless” and filed the legislation as an amendment to the National Defence Authorisation Act, or NDAA, which places a broad ban on the use of US federal money to buy Huawei products citing national security concerns.
“We simply don’t believe Marco Rubio’s amendment could be passed as law,” Huawei’s chief legal officer, Song Liuping, said in Shenzhen, China.
Intellectual property (IP) rights “should not be politicised”, Song said. “IP is a private property issue and should be free from the competition, trade talks and any other allegations that countries have between them.” Song added that Huawei has been discussing patent licensing with companies in the United States, Europe and other parts of the world on a regular basis.
While the measure proposed by Rubio is several steps from becoming law, lawmakers have successfully used the NDAA in the past to crack down on the Chinese firm. Huawei, the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment maker and No.2 smartphone maker, denies its products pose a security threat and has sought to fight back in US courts since Washington put it on an export blacklist last month.
It recently sued the US government over the NDAA.
The Chinese firm also sued CNEX Labs Inc, alleging misappropriation of trade secrets involving a memory control technology by the California semiconductor designer and poaching of employees.
A US jury on Wednesday cleared CNEX, while awarding the US firm no damages on its own trade theft claims.
Analysts have said Huawei may be more inclined to monetise its US patents now that the market ban and supplier ban imposed by Washington is expected to cost the firm $30 billion in revenue.
However, Song said Huawei has no intention of weaponising the company’s IP rights, echoing founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei from earlier this month. — Reuters
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