Huawei Demands $1 billion in Patent Fees From Verizon: U.S. Lawmakers worry

Huawei is the largest telecommunication equipment provider in the world and it is the third largest smartphone manufacturer. The Chinese manufacturer has also become the leader in patents.

According to the statistics mentioned in Huawei’s whitepaper on Innovation and Intellectual property, by the end of the year 2018, Huawei has registered a total of 87,805 patents out of which 11,152 patents are from the United States. Huawei has received more than $1.4 billion in intellectual property revenue from 2015 onwards.

Huawei also paid more than $6 billion in patent fees to the companies worldwide and 80% paid in the United States to the US-based companies.

Huawei has now focused on collecting patent fees from the US companies, Huawei asked the US largest operator Verizon in mid-June to pay more than 230 patent license fees which comes to $1 billion, Chinese source reported.

Interesting: Trump Eases Restrictions On Huawei

Earlier, only US companies were asking Chinese companies to pay patent license fees, Huawei’s demand for patent fees this time has created a panic among US lawmakers. Senator Marco Rubio has now proposed a new theory to the US Congress which asks for amendments in the new US Defense Authorization Program and does not recognize Huawei patents in the United States, further it doesn’t allow Huawei to sue US companies for infringement of Huawei patents.

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said in an interview, “Huawei has around 90,000 patents in total and it has 11,500 core patents filed in the United States. These patents are legally filed in the U.S. and we have all the legal rights for these patents. Verizon is now negotiating in patent fees, our fees are quite reasonable and we are quite polite as compared to Qualcomm, they should pay it the total of $1 billion in five years excluding 5G.