Huawei Now Using Patent Claims To Demand $1 Billion From Verizon, As The US Tries To Chase Huawei Out Of The US Market

Huawei Now Using Patent Claims To Demand $1 Billion From Verizon, As The US Tries To Chase Huawei Out Of The US Market

6 years ago
Anonymous $9jpehmcKty

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190613/02365642389/huawei-now-using-patent-claims-to-demand-1-billion-verizon-as-us-tries-to-chase-huawei-out-us-market.shtml

This one combines a few stories that we've covered a lot over the years, showing how they're intersecting. For some time now we've been covering the US's evidence-free attacks on Huawei, the Chinese telco equipment giant. Basically, for years, there have been stories insisting that Huawei is too closely linked to the Chinese government, leading to fear mongering stories saying that the company should be effectively barred from the US. However, multiple attempts to find security flaws in Huawei's products have failed to show any kind of backdoors, and the fact that US-based Huawei competitors often seem to be making the loudest noises about the Chinese giant should raise some eyebrows.

The other story we've covered a lot is around China and patents. For years and years, US companies (and policymakers) would go on and on about how Chinese companies didn't respect US patents, and demanding that China "must respect our IP." As we've highlighted for years, the Chinese government realized a decade or so ago that since the US kept trying to apply diplomatic pressure to "respect patents," China realized it could just start using patents as an economic weapon. The number of patents granted in China started to shoot up, and (surprise surprise) suddenly in legal disputes, Chinese companies were using patents to block American competitors. And the US couldn't really complain since it was the US that demanded China "respect patents" so much.