Meizu is definitely one of the most interesting Chinese smartphone manufacturers lately. This company has managed to grow quite a bit in the last couple of years, and they’ve released several devices this year, including their PRO 6 flagship smartphone. That being said, Meizu was actually sued by Qualcomm quite recently. This news surfaced a couple of days ago, and earlier today it was officially confirmed that Qualcomm has decided to take Meizu to court, and ask for the company to pay 520 million Yuan ($78 million) for patent infringement.
So, what exactly is Qualcomm accusing Meizu of? Well, the company claims that Meizu infringed on their 3G and 4G patents, though this is quite interesting considering these accusations are aimed at Meizu’s MediaTek-powered smartphones. Now, Meizu’s VP, Li Nan, has decided to share more info regarding this whole matter. The company has reached out to us in order to share Mr. Nan’s official statement, this is what he had to say: “Qualcomm gave us a black box, and said we must take it. The terms in the box are not open nor transparent, so we can not guarantee an open and transparent market. It is difficult for us to accept the unilateral terms”. Now, this statement might sound a bit confusing, not only because it was translated from Chinese, but also because the company VP’s word choices are interesting. The company’s VP basically tried to say that Qualcomm used its own way to calculate patent licensing terms and fees, the unilateral term based on its monopoly in the telecommunications industry, and that Meizu was not aware of all those rules.
It seems like there was some sort of confusion regarding royalties here, we all know that the Chinese market is quite different, and different rules are applied there. In any case, Meizu also added that they respect intellectual property and are more than willing to pay for using patents from other companies. Meizu even added that other companies infringed on their capsule-shaped home mBack button, so they definitely understand the importance of patent protection. The company is hoping that they can negotiate a fair and reasonable fee with Qualcomm. We’ll see what happens from this point on.