Ericsson will bring ZTE to court in three European countries over patent breaches.
The Swedish company has filed lawsuits accusing ZTE of stealing intellectual property for 2G and 3G technologies in the UK, Italy and Germany.
According to Reuters, the lawsuits will ask for a ban on ZTE products where the alleged patent infringements have occurred.
Ericsson had apparently pursued legal action after four years of negotiation failed to bring a satisfactory outcome to the dispute between the two companies.
ZTE has hit back at the prospect of facing Ericsson in court, accusing Ericsson of being the party that had abandoned negotiations.
A statement from ZTE said it regretted that talks between the two companies had ‘unilaterally broken down’, adding it would ‘initiate patent invalidation procedures ’ against Ericsson before China’s intellectual property authority.
ZTE’s larger Chinese rival Huawei had earlier filed an injunction against Nokia Siemens Networks’ acquisition of Motorola, over concerns that earlier IP supplied by Huawei to Motorola would be passed on to its Finnish-German rival.