Huawei Wins $11.6M Damage In Patent Infringement Lawsuit vs Samsung In China

The Quanzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Fujian found Samsung guilty of infringing a patent of Chinese tech giant Huawei. It ordered the Seoul-based company to pay Huawei $11.6 million as damage. The lawsuits that Huawei filed against Samsung’s two units in Huizhou and one in Tianjin, and two other companies in Fujian were for infringement of its patents for more than 20 models of Samsung gadgets.

2 Flagships

Besides the damage, the court ordered Samsung and the two other device makers to stop breaching the patents of Huawei. The devices that Huawei said Samsung infringed its patent include the flagship Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, China Daily reports.

The patent violations, according to Huawei, include Samsung’s unlicensed use of Huawei’s cellular communication technology and software in smartphones. Huawei got a patent from the State Intellectual Property Office of China in 2011. In 2015, Huawei boosted its effort to accumulate high-value patents by investing $9.2 billion in research and development which is 15 percent of its sales revenue that year, Global Times reports.

Commercialized UI

ZDNet reports that the Huawei lawsuit was over the patents in commercialized user interfaces such as the design of widgets and arrangement of icons. Samsung said in a statement that it would review the court decision to determine how it would respond to the court ruling. The South Korean giant points out that over many years, Samsung Electronics was the pioneer in the development of innovative mobile technologies by investing continuously in research and development to provide consumers with a wide range of innovative products.

Samsung filed in July in China a countersuit against Huawei. It accused the Chinese tech giant of breaching its patents for the Mate 8 and Honor smartphones of Huawei. The combined market share of Apple and Samsung in the smartphone market is 38 percent, while Huawei holds 8.3 percent.