Huawei and HP have signed a multiyear global patent cross-licensing agreement covering certain Wi-Fi technologies, extending their cooperation into intellectual property licensing.
Under the agreement, HP will receive licenses to certain Wi-Fi patents held by Huawei, while Huawei will obtain reciprocal patent rights from HP. Neither company disclosed the financial terms or specified which patents are covered.
The deal centers on Wi-Fi, a technology used in devices ranging from laptops and smartphones to household appliances. Wi-Fi standards are developed with technical contributions from companies across the industry, with successive generations designed to improve speed, capacity, latency, and energy efficiency.
Huawei said its contributions span multiple generations of Wi-Fi technology. It highlighted Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7, which are designed to support bandwidth-intensive applications such as high-definition and 8K video, gaming, augmented and virtual reality, video conferencing, and cloud computing.
Alan Fan, Huawei’s chief IP officer, said the company uses patent licensing to make its technologies available to the broader industry, particularly technologies incorporated into technical standards.
Steven Geiszler, who represented Huawei during the negotiations, said the agreement licenses Huawei patents covering standardized Wi-Fi technologies while giving the company reciprocal patent rights from HP.
The cross-licensing structure gives both companies rights to use parts of the other’s patent portfolio, rather than limiting the arrangement to a one-way license of Huawei’s Wi-Fi patents to HP.
Huawei and HP did not disclose how long the agreement will remain in effect beyond describing it as multiyear.