InterDigital, Qualcomm to sell 5G tech Huawei despite Trump ban

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America’s InterDigital Wireless Inc. and Qualcomm said they will still license its 5G patents to Huawei despite the US sanction banning the Chinese telecoms giant from doing business with an American company.

According to Reuters, InterDigital and Qualcomm are the two major American holders of patents for wireless networking technology, including the 5G networks rolling out this year in China. Last week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order restricting the ability of U.S. firms to sell technology to Huawei, though officials on Monday eased some of those restrictions for 90 days.

InterDigital generates revenue by developing wireless technologies and then licensing out the patents. The company said it believes it can continue its efforts to strike a 5G deal with Huawei because export control laws do not cover patents, which are public records and therefore not confidential technology.

“The addition of Huawei to the Entity List does not prevent InterDigital from entering into a patent license agreement with Huawei, because our patents cover technologies that are publicly available and therefore outside the scope of U.S. export control laws,” InterDigital spokesman Patrick Van de Wille told Reuters in a statement.

Google as well as other American tech companies yesterday announced they are banning Huawei from their services. Google explicitly said it has banned Huawei from its Android mobile OS platform and that the Chinese telecoms company will no longer get updates to its apps such as Gmail, Chrome and other benefits of the OS.

In response, Huawei has hinted it has its own mobile OS that is ready for deployment should the ban subsists.

Huawei has denied all the allegations of intellectual property theft as well as saying it would shut down the company should the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) request for such backdoor access.

In defense of Huawei, the Chinese government has defended Huawei. Spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, Lu Kang, made remarks in response to German media reports that years of scrutiny by Britain, Germany and the European Union (EU) have found no obvious “backdoors” in Huawei products, while security loopholes are often spotted in products made by Cisco of the United States, as evidenced by ten “backdoor” incidents exposed since 2013.

He told state-owned Xinhuan news agency that: “We’d like to see the U.S. comment on the findings,” Lu said at a press briefing, adding that since the “Prism gate” incident, the U.S. has remained silent over evidence alleging its illegal practices of cyber attacks and thefts.

For the purpose of gaining competitive advantages, the United States, judging others using its own standards, has resorted to smear tactics against other countries’ enterprises without providing convincing evidence, he said.

“The conclusions of Europe’s scrutiny have proven Huawei innocent, and showed the U.S. suppression against other countries’ enterprises with state power is unjustified,” Lu added.

However, it is yet to be seen how trade and political ally countries to the US will treat Huawei as a fall out of the US sanction. Last year, Canada arrested Huawei’s CFO, Meng Wanghzou, on the request of the US. She is facing extradition to the US for violating US sanctions on Iran.

China has also retaliated by sentencing a Canadian citizen to death for drug smuggling.

Huawei is now the world’s second-largest smartphone maker after it dethroned Apple Inc’s iPhone and it is now second to Samsung on a global scale.

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