Now The US Trusts Huawei Again? Because It Told Huawei To Testify Against Qualcomm

Recently, we learned that the United States has guarded up against Huawei, the giant Chinese phone maker. Particularly, the country has considered Huawei a national security threat and warned its allies against using Huawei’s networking devices. Additionally, the US had banned the use of Huawei’s product in its military bases and told Verizon as well as AT&T not to sell Huawei Mate 10 Pro to its customers.

With all those warnings, you‘d probably not expect the US itself to call for Huawei to provide testimony in the trial between FTC and Qualcomm.

On Friday, the non-jury trial began when FTC (Federal Trade Commission) of the US tempted to convince Judge Lucy Koh that Qualcomm’s way of patent licensing indicates that it’s an anti-competitive monopoly. The trial will last ten days. Lenovo and Huawei testified that the giant chip maker threatened to stop providing chips to them if they stop paying licensing fees to Qualcomm.

There was a video played in court where Nanfen Yu, Huawei General Counsel said that in 2013, the condition for it to keep getting CMDA processors was to extend the licensing agreement with Qualcomm. Nanfen recalled the clear requirement from Qualcomm to sign some form of agreement on licensing patents, “We had no choice.”

Ira Blumberg, Lenovo’s vice president of intellectual property, testified that in the past, Qualcomm had revenge actions towards customers that tried to challenge its legal terms, including delaying or even cutting off its chip supply. There was no certainty if Qualcomm would take real action or not, but Lenovo could not take such risk.

In response, Qualcomm said that it never stopped providing Lenovo or Huawei with chips even if they were on the negotiation of a new deal involving components they would use for their devices.

The trial will run through January 28, in San Jose, California. If the Commission wins, Qualcomm will have to completely change its way of licensing its patents.