Chinese products often find themselves in the crosshairs of patent infringement rights as time and again; Chinese companies have attempted to gain an unfair advantage over its competitors by copying existing technologies. This time around, Philips has filed patent infringement suits against Chinese giants Xiaomi and Vivo which can prove to be ominous for the future of the Chinese companies if Philips was to win the case.
In Philips suit against Xiaomi, a single judge bench while issuing summons to the company in the suit, directed Xiaomi to maintain Rs. 1,000 crores in its bank accounts operated in India with the honourable court deciding to hear the suit on March 1, 2021.
In Philips another suit against Vivo, the latter has been directed to avoid creating any encumbrance or third-party rights in the manufacturing plant in Greater Noida with the suit against Vivo slated to be heard next on February 10, 2021
Philips in its infringement suits is claiming that Xiaomi and Vivo have violated its “Standard Essential Patents” in telecommunication technologies.
Recently, Huawei had been forced to sell its Honor smartphone business after US sanctions hit the company hard. Struggling to keep afloat its consumer hardware business, Huawei had been resigned to sell off its Honor smartphone business to a consortium of over 30 agents and dealers for a pittance with the consortium planning to set up a new company called Shenzen Zhixin New Information Technology in order to complete the purchase.
Read More: Huawei sells its Honor mobile handset brand to an unknown Chinese firm for peanuts
The deal which is reportedly believed to be in the region of $15.2 billion will likely see the consortium laugh their way to the bank as the evaluation of Honor would have been much more under normal circumstances and in the absence of American sanctions. Huawei had simply no room to manoeuvre and perhaps had to take solace from whatever amount they were able to eke out from the buyers.
Troubles began mounting for Huawei after the U.S. Commerce Department placed it on the “Entity List” which made it next to impossible for the company to successfully operate its consumer hardware business.
Such were the pitfalls of being in the “Entity List” that the USA blocked many chipmakers from supplying to Huawei. This resulted in the company either having to turn to 4G chipsets from Qualcomm – a key competitor or rely on the ever unreliable Chinese semiconductor manufacturing industry. Both the options were a complete no-go for Huawei. The road less travelled would have been to completely decouple from American companies which would have seen the company burn a lot of cash.
It is pertinent to note that Huawei will now no longer hold any share in the new Honor brand which the new buyers are planning to take public in the next three years. The deal includes R&D capabilities, supply chain management, and other Honor assets.
It seems that Chinese companies are running into trouble across the world as the long rope extended to them is no longer available after the China made pandemic.