Verizon settles with Huawei over patent disagreement

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 21st, 2020, and Huawei went on to file multiple lawsuits against the telecom in courts across Texas. At the center of the feud were 12 standards-relevant patents that Huawei said Verizon was using in its infrastructure. At the time, Verizon dismissed the lawsuits, claiming they were “nothing more than a PR stunt.”

It has since changed its tune. “Verizon is happy with the settlement reached with Huawei involving patent lawsuits. While terms of the settlement are not being disclosed, our team did an outstanding job bringing this protracted matter to a close,” Verizon spokesperson Rich Young said in a statement.

For Huawei, this is precisely the type of outcome the company had hoped for when it announced at the start of 2021 that it planned to monetize its patent portfolio more aggressively. While the US and other parts of the world have barred it from their national 5G networks, the Chinese company is ideally situated to make money on licensing fees. It has among the most 5G-related standards-relevant patents of any company in the world. To that end, it estimated the licensing strategy could help it generate as much as $1.3 billion in additional revenue between 2019 and the end of 2021.