Caifinance News, October 30 (Reporter: Fu Jing) Recently, lenovo group filed an intellectual property lawsuit against ZTE (000063.SZ) in the High Court of England, attracting attention from the industry. This morning, in a formal response provided to Caifinance reporters, ZTE stated: 'We always respect any company's legal actions, but we are very disappointed with lenovo's behavior this time. It's hard for us to understand but we express respect for lenovo's lawsuit in the UK. This lawsuit by lenovo will not change ZTE's determination to protect its legitimate rights.'

According to foreign media reports, lenovo group sued ZTE for patent infringement at the High Court of England and Wales on October 21, with case number HP-2024-000038.

It is understood that the plaintiffs involve six companies: Lenovo Group Limited, Lenovo (USA) Limited, Lenovo Technology (United Kingdom) Limited, Motorola Mobility LLC, Motorola Mobility UK Limited, and Lenovo Innovations Limited (Hong Kong) represented by Kirkland & Ellis law firm; The defendants involve six companies including ZTE Corporation, ZTE (UK) Limited, Nubia Technology Co., Ltd., and three UK dealers: Gamegeek Limited, Livewire Telecom Limited, EFones.Com Limited.

ZTE responded today that it has been engaged in several years of negotiations with lenovo on patent licensing issues. ZTE has always maintained the highest goodwill, seeking a reasonable return in its own research and development innovation, and hopes that both parties can resolve their disputes efficiently and reasonably. ZTE has also maintained a cautious and restrained attitude in taking legal rights-protection measures other than negotiation based on trust in lenovo as a Chinese company.

Caifinance reporters also sent an interview email to lenovo on this matter, but have not received a response as of the press deadline.

According to ZTE's semi-annual report data, as of June 30, it has around 0.0915 million global patent applications and approximately 0.046 million cumulative global authorized patents. Among them, it has about 5,400 patent applications and over 2,000 authorized patents in the chip field; about 5,000 patent applications and over 2,000 authorized patents in the AI field. It is reported that ZTE continues to disclose 5G standard essential patents to ETSI, with the number of effective families ranking among the top five globally.

"ZTE respects the value of intellectual property, respects others' innovation, protects its own innovation, adheres to promoting the establishment of a rational, fair, and equitable patent licensing system, and insists on realizing a positive cycle of technological innovation through reasonable returns." The company also stated in its response.

Caifeng News reporters have noticed that patent disputes in the communications industry have been frequent over the years. For example, Huawei has filed patent infringement lawsuits against MediaTek, Qualcomm and Apple have had a patent war, lm ericsson and Nokia have launched 5G patent litigation against mobile phone manufacturers worldwide, lm ericsson has filed patent infringement lawsuits against Apple in multiple jurisdictions, and so on. This month, InterDigital and OPPO signed a licensing agreement, agreeing to dismiss all pending lawsuits, covering global mobile devices under the OPPO, realme, and OnePlus brands.

According to the aforementioned foreign media reports, Lenovo reached a settlement with InterDigital earlier this month, while the dispute with lm ericsson is still ongoing. According to Southern Metropolis Daily, ZTE and third-party entities that have spun off patents have been involved in litigation disputes with Huawei, Samsung, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, and other manufacturers in China, Germany, the USA, and other places.

As of now, specific details of this case have not been disclosed, and Caifeng News reporters will continue to follow up on any developments.