Nokia secures fourth 5G licensing agreement in 12 months
Nokia enters patent cross-license agreement with Chinese vendor | The pair set to share 5G innovations and other cellular tech | Marks Nokia’s fourth agreement in the last 12 months.
Nokia has signed a patent cross-license agreement with a leading Chinese smartphone vendor.
The alliance, between Nokia and Honor, involves sharing fundamental innovations in 5G and various cellular technologies from both companies.
This agreement marks the fourth litigation-free smartphone agreement that Nokia has sealed in the past 12 months.
The specific terms of the agreement remain confidential between the parties.
Susanna Martikainen, chief licensing officer mobile devices at Nokia, was “delighted” to have reached a deal.
The agreement “highlights once again the strength of Nokia’s patent portfolio and decades-long contributions to cellular standards and other technologies,” continued Martikainen.
Honor's Wenyu Zhou, head of global IP, said: "As both a 5G SEP holder and implementer, Honor highly respects IP rights and strongly believes that the reasonable value of IP is important to the development of the mobile industry.”
According to Zhou, reaching the patent cross-license agreement demonstrates Honor’s “commitment to innovation”.
Nokia’s patent portfolio is built on more than €140 billion invested in R&D since 2000 and includes around 20,000 patent families, with over 6,000 patent families viewed as essential to 5G.
Nokia’s licensing trail
Nokia's most recent collaboration with Honor added to a series of successful licensing partnerships with Apple, Samsung, and Huawei.
In June 2023, the Finnish company signed a patent licence agreement with Apple, which replaced a previous deal between the two that was set to expire at the end of the year.
This “long-term” agreement covered Nokia’s inventions in 5G and other technologies.
Earlier in the year, January 2023, Nokia additionally signed a cross-license patent agreement with Samsung also covering 5G technology.
Within this deal, Samsung made royalty payments for a multi-year period for using Nokia’s inventions in 5G and other technologies.
The previous patent agreement between the two firms lasted for four years and expired in December 2022.
In December 2022, Nokia and Huawei extended their patent licence agreement.
Nokia is also a licensor in Avanci’s 5G connected vehicle programme—which launched in August and covers all 5G, 4G, 3G and 2G standard essential patents (SEP) of the participating licensors.
The programme comprises 62 licensors, including major SEP owners Qualcomm, InterDigital and Ericsson, Huawei, and Mercedes-Benz.
Nokia is currently involved in multi-jurisdictional litigation with Oppo, which began in June 2021 when Oppo’s licence agreement with Nokia ended.
The duo failed to reach a new agreement, leading Nokia to file lawsuits in multiple courts globally, such as in Germany, France, Brazil, the UK, and other jurisdictions.
Most recently, the Chinese Chongqing First Intermediate People’s Court favoured Nokia by issuing a determination based on FRAND terms.
Oppo was obliged to pay for the entire unlicensed period during which it used Nokia’s tech.
However, Oppo later asserted that the judgment from the Chinese court supported its attempt to negotiate lower fees for Nokia's essential patents—a decision Nokia plans to appeal.
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