Huawei said it won a preliminary injunction against smaller Chinese rival ZTE as part of a trademark and patent battle that the two vendors are engaged in around the world. ZTE, meanwhile, countered that the ruling would not stop it from moving forward in the European market.
The ruling, which came from a German court, said ZTE is prohibited from using a Huawei trademark on its USB modems and from selling USB modems that have a certain protected design. The injunction centers on a trademark for a European Union environmental regulation compliance, which ZTE claimed it stopped using in July 2009. "This is like having a little bit of graphic design around the words 'energy saving', and use it as a trademark of household appliances," ZTE said in a statement. "There is a clear lack of legitimacy."
ZTE also said it thinks the case goes "beyond normal technology, marketing and legal litigation."
"ZTE's determination to explore the European market will not be impeded by this or any such action," the company said. "The preliminary injunction will not impact on ZTE's business."
On April 28, Huawei said it filed patent-infringement lawsuits against ZTE in courts in France, Germany and Hungary. The patents relate to data card and LTE technologies, and in a statement Huawei said that ZTE had illegally used Huawei's trademark on some of ZTE's data cards. A day later, ZTE counter-sued in China.
More than simply patents and trademarks are at stake in the case, as the two companies are vying with Western vendors for contracts among European operators, particularly for LTE buildouts.
For more:
- see this FierceBroadbandWireless article
- see this Bloomberg article
- see this IDG News Service article
- see this V3 article
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