China’s Huawei and Amazon in Patent Licensing Agreement 

People visit the Huawei stand at the 2024 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain February 27, 2024. (Reuters)
People visit the Huawei stand at the 2024 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain February 27, 2024. (Reuters)
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China’s Huawei and Amazon in Patent Licensing Agreement 

People visit the Huawei stand at the 2024 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain February 27, 2024. (Reuters)
People visit the Huawei stand at the 2024 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain February 27, 2024. (Reuters)

China's Huawei Technologies and US tech giant Amazon said they had signed a multi-year patent licensing deal that resolves litigation between them.

Most terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Alan Fan, head of Huawei's intellectual property rights department, said the Chinese firm had ended lawsuits brought against Amazon in Germany over patented technology related to wifi and video playback.

The United States has barred Chinese telecom companies from its market citing concerns about data, and designated Huawei and ZTE as threats, requiring US carriers to remove their equipment from US networks.

It has also prevented US firms from supplying Huawei with chips and other components, crippling its smartphone business.

Despite those tensions, the patent license deal shows "American and Chinese companies and companies from other regions are cooperating without limitations in standards and patent licensing," Fan said.

Huawei also announced it had signed a cross-licensing patent deal with domestic smartphone maker Vivo covering communication technologies including 5G. Huawei has similar patent agreements with Chinese smartphone manufacturers Xiaomi and Oppo.



EU Says Trump Arrival Will Not Impact Big Tech Cases

The logos of mobile apps, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Netflix, are displayed on a screen in this illustration picture taken December 3, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo
The logos of mobile apps, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Netflix, are displayed on a screen in this illustration picture taken December 3, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo
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EU Says Trump Arrival Will Not Impact Big Tech Cases

The logos of mobile apps, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Netflix, are displayed on a screen in this illustration picture taken December 3, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo
The logos of mobile apps, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Netflix, are displayed on a screen in this illustration picture taken December 3, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo

The European Commission said on Tuesday it was assessing its cases against Apple, Google and Meta and that President-elect Donald Trump's impending arrival in the White House did not affect its commitment to enforcing its laws on big tech.

The European Commission has carried out a series of investigations into US tech firms under its Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, which seek to make large platforms adhere to market rules and act against illegal content, according to Reuters.

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said Europe was "institutionalizing censorship".

"We have been very clear that no matter which administration is in place in third countries, this will not affect our enforcement work," a Commission spokesperson told the EU's executive's daily briefing.

The Financial Times reported that the European Commission was reassessing its investigations of Apple, Meta and Google in a review that could lead it to scale back or change its investigations that could lead to fines as US groups urge Trump to intervene.

The Commission denied it was carrying out a review.

"What we do have is upcoming meetings to assess maturity of cases, to assess the allocation of resources and the general readiness of the investigation," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said that the cases were still being handled at a technical level and so not reached a point at which decisions could be taken.

"Obviously there may be a political reality which puts pressure on the technical work, but we need to distinguish the two stages because we need to have a court-proof investigation," another spokesperson said.