Counting up, it has been more than a month since Huawei officially announced the pure-blooded Hongmeng on June 21, and Huawei's topic has never been interrupted:
The Mate 70 has been continuously exposed, the nova Flip for the low-end market is about to be released, and the big-mouthed (temporary) "favorite" Xiangjie S9 continues to build momentum......
If you count the new product launch conference officially announced last week on August 6, Huawei's big and small actions have not stopped, and the "full recovery" can be said to be on the way.
But ah, but, at this juncture, Huawei has quietly made a big deal......
Huawei's prosecution and prosecution
On July 19, some media observed that Huawei filed a patent infringement lawsuit against MediaTek in a Chinese local court.
Wait a minute, does this mean that Huawei sued MediaTek?
Presumably, at this time, the people who eat melons are a little confused like the dark horse, and the problem is not big, let's take it slowly.
First of all, because neither side has publicly and clearly responded to this matter, Dark Horse went through the current highly recognized statement:
Domestic intellectual property industry experts speculate that Huawei's lawsuit against MediaTek this time is likely to involve 5G (or including 4G, 3G, etc.) cellular mobile communication technology.
As we all know, Huawei, as one of the designators of communication industry standards in the 5G era, has a number of standard essential patents in the 5G field that cannot be underestimated, and in the 5G SEP patent ranking released by Clarivate Analytics, Huawei ranks first, and MediaTek ranks 11th.
Therefore, MediaTek, which claims to have 2 billion terminal products equipped with its processors on the market a year, will more or less involve Huawei's 5G patents in the business of mobile terminal processors (human words: mobile phone chips).
As early as two or three years ago, the two sides had a disagreement over this patent fee, and after talking for a few years, some time ago this disagreement was finally completely not negotiated and collapsed-
So there is the matter we mentioned at the beginning, Huawei suing MediaTek.
Then the matter was not over, and on the 25th, some media discovered that MediaTek had launched a counterclaim against Huawei to the United Kingdom High Court on July 15.
Perhaps thinking that Huawei's license fee based on the price of the terminal phone is too high (we will talk about this license fee later), MediaTek and its subsidiaries also sued Huawei for patent infringement in the United Kingdom courts.
It is equivalent to saying that after Huawei sued MediaTek for patent infringement in China, MediaTek went to United Kingdom and launched a counterclaim, and a case involved the jurisdiction of two sovereign countries, and the development of things was even more confusing......
Of course, compared with the outcome of the matter, the people who eat melons for unknown reasons at the moment may be more confused:
Huawei is in full swing in the terminal business, why did it suddenly rush to make chips? Isn't it just a commercial mutual lawsuit between normal enterprises, what is there to pay special attention to? What does MediaTek say about the counterclaim in United Kingdom?
Not to mention, there is indeed a bit of a doorway in this.
Huawei wants to change the lives of "Qualcomm".
For example, in the mobile phone industry, the patent owner (the professional term "patentee") collects patent fees from chip manufacturers, and can no longer collect patent fees from mobile phone manufacturers.
At present, the default patent license fee model in the industry is charged to terminal manufacturers.
In other words, if a patented information and communication technology is used in a chip, the patentee will generally not ask the chip manufacturer for money, but will find the mobile phone manufacturer that uses the chip to collect patent fees.
The reason is simple, you can make more money.
According to Qualcomm, a major chip owner, it is: "The patent fee charged on the mobile phone is calculated according to the price of the mobile phone, and if it is collected on the chip, it must be calculated according to the price of the chip. ”
This model, of course, is very friendly to the patentee, but the terminal manufacturer is uncomfortable.
I obviously only use the chip, but you directly charge the money according to the price of the whole machine, which is equivalent to saying that in addition to paying for the authorization of the chip, the panel, memory, and various components that have nothing to do with mobile communication also have to pay "tolls".
Is this reasonable? It simply doesn't make sense!
And we all know that the wool is out of the sheep, and the mobile phone manufacturer was "slaughtered" by the patent fee, and the cost of the mobile phone was a lot higher for no reason, and the result was that the consumer was the "wronged head" to pay.
At that time, Apple launched an antitrust lawsuit because Qualcomm collected license fees at the "terminal level", saying that Qualcomm forced customers to sign a patent licensing agreement before buying chips, "allowing Qualcomm to take a certain percentage of iPhone revenue in exchange for continuous chip supply." (5% supposedly)
Although the two reached a settlement in the end, Apple not only had to give Qualcomm a $4.5 billion settlement, but also had to pay Qualcomm this terminal-level license fee.
Qualcomm is not the only one making a lot of money from patents.
Nokia, everyone still has the impression that although people are almost "hiccuping" in the terminal business now, as a major patent owner, Nokia has not been around the world, in the name of patent infringement "patrol police":
Nokia currently has 20,000+ mobile phone-related patents, relying on these family backgrounds, Nokia sued Apple in 2011, receiving about 3 billion yuan in compensation, and Apple will pay 95 million euros per quarter in patent fees;
In 2014, Nokia sued Samsung again and received hundreds of millions of euros in compensation; Domestic manufacturers such as Lenovo, Huawei, vivo, and OPPO have basically been hammered.
Last year, Nokia's profit from patent licensing was as high as 1.085 billion euros, which is still the data that has declined in recent years, and in 2021 this figure was 1.502 billion euros.
A "outdated manufacturer" can rely on patent licensing to eat enough, it is conceivable that the price of mobile phones is getting more and more expensive nowadays, and how much power these patent licensing fees have contributed.
It is precisely for this reason that Huawei, as a patentee, has initiated a patent lawsuit against chip manufacturers, which has attracted so much attention from the industry.
To put it bluntly, if Huawei succeeds this time, it will be equivalent to setting a precedent for "transferring patent licensing fees from terminals to components". It's not an immediate solution, but it's significant.
As for why a Chinese company MediaTek wants to go to United Kingdom to counterclaim, it is also very simple.
First, the United Kingdom courts and Chinese courts are the only jurisdictions in the world that can explicitly issue global rate rulings on SEP disputes.
Secondly, according to the characteristics of Western case law, in the past, patentees such as Qualcomm, Nokia, and Ericsson had successful litigation or settled cases, which would lead to court rulings in favor of patentees, that is, charging fees to the terminal level.
To put it simply, following past cases, United Kingdom courts are more likely to favor MediaTek than Huawei.
Huawei's "counteroffensive" begins?
Let's make things clear, but Dark Horse found that many people who eat melons care about the points that are more strange-
"Huawei, why do you want to sue Chinese (Taiwan) companies?"
Uh, this dark horse still came out to say a fair word, this matter is essentially a commercial dispute, in business, don't talk about Huawei and MediaTek, who hasn't "torn" with whom between several major domestic mobile phone terminal manufacturers?
Moreover, although MediaTek has developed very well in recent years, its background in the communications industry is still relatively thin, and many core technologies are solved by ADI, Qualcomm, Huawei, etc.
After all, Huawei's R&D investment is a lot a year, so it doesn't make sense to do charity, right?
Source: Let the bullets fly
However, Dark Horse thinks that the more important point of this matter is that Huawei has pointed the finger at the baseband chip manufacturers, and the beneficiaries are the terminal manufacturers.
Although it is a little embarrassing to say, China is indeed relatively backward in the development of baseband chips, and most of the more well-known domestic wafer factories with higher production capacity are not in the mainland.
On the contrary, the terminal mobile phone business has been in full swing in recent years, the domestic market has been saturated, and it is about to sweep overseas.
And Huawei's move will benefit domestic mobile phone manufacturers.
Finally, the dark horse also speculated that Huawei has the most standard essential patents in the 5G era, but it has been "stuck" by the West over the years, and to be honest, it is really aggrieved.
Now that Huawei is out of the predicament, it is very reasonable to show its fangs and show its sword.
But in any case, Dark Horse still hopes that the patent license fee can be transferred upward, after all, the most intuitive impact may be the price of the terminal mobile phone.
Who doesn't want to knock down the price of their mobile phone? (Dark Horse: Although it may not be realistic, hehe)