Verizon settles patent dispute with Huawei

Huawei and Verizon (Engadget’s parent company) have settled their long-standing patent dispute. The disagreement dates back to 2019, when Huawei said it approached Verizon about licensing some of its technologies. After nearly a year of negotiations, talks between the two companies broke down on January 21, 2020, and Huawei went on to file several telecommunications lawsuits in Texas courts. At the center of the feud were 12 standards patents that Huawei said Verizon used in its infrastructure. At the time, Verizon dismissed the lawsuits, saying they were “nothing more than a publicity stunt.”

He has since changed his tone. “Verizon is pleased with the agreement reached with Huawei regarding patent lawsuits. While the terms of the settlement are withheld, our team has done an outstanding job in bringing this protracted case to a close, ”said Rich Young, spokesperson for Verizon.

For Huawei, this is precisely the kind of result the company had hoped for when it announced in early 2021 that it planned to monetize its patent portfolio more aggressively. While the United States and other parts of the world have excluded it from their national 5G networks, the Chinese company is ideally placed to make money on license fees. It has one of the most relevant patents for 5G standards of any company in the world. To that end, he estimated that the licensing strategy could help him generate up to $ 1.3 billion in additional revenue between 2019 and the end of 2021.