A new court injunction in the United Kingdom has ordered Huawei to begin paying royalties on each smartphone it sells or face a potential handset sales ban. Unwired Planet, an American company Huawei is being asked to pay royalties to, found that the Chinese giant infringed upon a number of its patents and opted to take the case to court. Huawei offered to pay royalties to the company back in April, but the offer was reportedly deemed late and only came after a number of lost court battles.
Unwired Planet owns thousands of networking patents, though the injunction against Huawei has been put on hold due to the company’s desire to appeal it. Currently, though, the ruling states that Huawei will have to pay between 0.032 percent and 0.064 percent of the selling price of each device sold to the US-based company, with that amount said to be lower in China and a number of other markets. If the company refuses to pay the royalties, it could eventually be hit with a sales ban, which would be a significant setback on its ambitious journey to become the number one manufacturer in the world. Huawei said that it is prepared to pay the royalties in full if that is what is deemed necessary after the appeal, with the company stating that it has “a strong record of respecting” other firm’s intellectual properties, implying that it’s adamant to maintain that reputation going forward.
The company has stated that it remains committed to providing its products and services to all customers without any kind of interruption. Regarding the appeal, Huawei has until the end of the month to file the papers and it’s expected to challenge the jurisdiction of the British court that issued the injunction by arguing such a judicial body cannot rule on royalties on worldwide sales. The legal battle between the two companies is turning out to be a long one, with the initial complaints on behalf of Unwired Planet dating all the way back to 2014. It remains to be seen what the final ruling is once Huawei’s appeal has been processed, but it appears that Huawei will be set to pay royalties on its UK sales at the very least.