[News] Qualcomm to Pay Huawei for First Time Under Cross-Licensing Deal Covering 5G, AI and LogicFolding Patents

Huawei’s homegrown technologies are gaining greater commercial recognition. According to Nikkei, Huawei announced Monday that it had reached a new multiyear patent cross-licensing agreement with rival mobile chipmaker Qualcomm, under which Qualcomm will become the net payer for the first time. The shift comes 25 years after Huawei made its first IP licensing payment to Qualcomm, marking a significant milestone for the Chinese company’s intellectual property portfolio. The deal will still be subject to regulatory review in the U.S., Nikkei notes.

Reuters adds that it is the first patent licensing agreement between the two companies to cover 5G technologies. The deal extends beyond cross-licensing, with Qualcomm also set to purchase certain Huawei U.S. patents covering compute, AI, networking, and other technologies. That transaction is expected to close following regulatory approvals, according to Huawei.

Under the agreement, Qualcomm will pay to use more than 680 Huawei patents, some of which are registered in the U.S. While they represent just 0.23% of Huawei’s 296,248 active or pending patents, they cover key AI and networking technologies, including near-packaged optics (NPO) interconnects.

LogicFolding Among Key Technologies Covered by Patent Deal

Notably, the portfolio includes patents related to Huawei’s Tau Scaling Law, including its LogicFolding chip technology, which introduces a new approach to semiconductor and system design, Bloomberg points out. As noted by Reuters, LogicFolding is already used in Huawei’s latest Kirin 9050 and 9050 Pro smartphone processors, with the 9050 Pro first appearing in the Mate XT 2 in September.

Huawei said its accumulated revenue from intellectual property licensing would exceed $6.9 billion following the deal. The company did not disclose the value of the Qualcomm agreement, but Nikkei reports that it would exceed the $133.9 million threshold requiring review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act. Qualcomm, meanwhile, did not disclose how many of its own patents it is licensing to Huawei or what technologies they cover, the report adds.

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(Photo credit: Huawei)