T-Mobile And Huawei Will Be Seeing A Lot Of Each Other, In Court

According to a report by Biz Journals, Huawei has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas against T-Mobile US Inc TMUS in which the former alleged T-Mobile refused a deal to license Huawei patents, yet continues to use its technologies.

Huawei is more than just China's most popular smartphone manufacturer, as it oversees a massive global portfolio of hardware, software and technology patents.

Biz Journals noted that Huawei offered to grant T-Mobile a license to use its 4G patents under a "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" term. However, T-Mobile refused to accept a deal and makes use of 14 different patents controlled by Huawei.

Huawei is hoping the courts will make a declaration facilitating a licensing agreement.

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The dispute between the two companies traces back to 2014 when Huawei asked if T-Mobile would be interested in a patent licensing discussion. T-Mobile refused at that time, but the two companies continued negotiating. However, talks fell apart earlier this year, prompting Huawei to file its complaint.

The relationship between the two companies is even more complex when factoring in T-Mobile's 2014 allegation that Huawei's engineers spied on its corporate laboratories to gain valuable intelligence and data on its phone-testing robots.

As noted by Android Police, Huawei initiated a similar lawsuit against SAMSUNG ELECTRONIC KRW5000SSNLF for LTE patent violations and a trial is scheduled to start later on this year.