Motorola And Huawei Settle Patent Lawsuit

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

In case you hadn’t heard, Motorola Solutions and Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies have been embroiled in a nasty patent lawsuit. In January, the Chinese company has filed a lawsuit to prevent Motorola from giving Nokia Siemens (which acquired Motorola’s wireless network for $1.2 billion last year) Huawei’s IP information. Today, Motorola and Huawei have issued a joint statement announcing that the two companies have settles all litigation. Both parties have agreed to withdraw and dismiss their claims from the courts.

Huawei has actually entered an agreement with Motorola Solutions and Nokia Siemens that allows Motorola Solutions to transfer its commercial agreements with Huawei for a fee, and allows Nokia to receive and use Huawei confidential information revealed to Motorola. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. And Motorola is also dismissing a prior complaint filed against Huawei, which alleged that the Chinese company was conspiring to steal trade secrets from former Motorola employees.

The backstory is that Huawei was claiming that because Motorola and the company has a previous licensing relationship (worth $880 million), Motorola’s wireless networking unit was provided with details on Huawei’s confidential intellectual property. Huawei was trying to ensure that Motorola does not transfer this confidential information to Nokia. Motorola, Huawei contended, did not provided any assurances that it will prevent disclosure of that IP information to Nokia and if this transfer of information did happen, Huawei would suffer from this.

It appears that Motorola ponied up the funds to pay off Huawei in this suit. In February, Huawei won a court order preventing Motorola from transferring the Chinese telecom-gear maker’s intellectual property to Nokia Siemens.

Greg Brown, President & CEO of Motorola said in a statement: “We regret that these disputes have occurred between our two companies. Motorola Solutions values the long-standing relationship we have had with Huawei. After reviewing the facts, we decided to resolve these matters and return to our traditional relationship of confidence and trust.”

Website: huawei.com
Launch Date: 1987

Huawei Technologies is a leading telecom solutions provider. Through continuous customer-centric innovation, they have established end-to-end advantages in Telecom Network Infrastructure, Application & Software, Professional Services and Devices. With comprehensive strengths in wireline, wireless and IP technologies, Huawei has gained a leading position in the All-IP convergence age. Their products and solutions have been deployed in over 100 countries and have served 45 of the world’s top 50 telecom operators, as well as one third of the world’s population. Huawei...

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