Beijing court upholds Huawei’s rights in smartphone patent disputes with Samsung

A Beijing court specialising in intellectual property (IP) rights disputes has dismissed requests from Samsung Electronics seeking invalidation of Huawei Technologies’ certain patent rights on smartphones after an earlier local Chinese court decision banned sales of certain phone models from the South Korean brand.

The Beijing IP Court confirmed that Huawei’s patent rights on smartphones involved in the disputes with Samsung were valid and it denied any procedural violation in the previous patent review process, which had dismissed Samsung’s requests on the grounds of they lacked a factual and legal basis, according to a report by China Intellectual Property News on Sunday – a newspaper supervised by the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO).

The report added that Huawei and Samsung both appealed to the Beijing Higher People’s Court after the decision. The latest verdict could not be found by searching the website of the Beijing Court.

“Huawei has already received the verdict. Huawei believes that the resection and protection on each other’s intellectual property rights can make returns on the research and development (R&D) investments, and promote the industry innovation and healthy and sustainable development of the industry,” the Chinese company said in a statement issued Tuesday. 

Samsung did not reply to a media query sent by email on Tuesday.

Once a dominant player in China, Samsung’s smartphone share in the world’s largest phone market slumped below 1 per cent to only 0.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2017, compared with Huawei’s 20 per cent during the same period, according to a Strategy Analytics report released this week.