Ericsson sues Chinese rival for patent violation

“For the UK and Italy it’s patents on mobile phones. In Germany, it’s both

phones and infrastructure,” Fredrik Hallstan told AFP, adding that the firm

had tried “for several years” to get them to sign licence agreements.

“We’ve signed licence agreements with 90 companies and in order to get the

market to work in a fair way, we think it’s right that everyone who uses

patents signs and pays for licence agreements,” Hallstan added.

ZTE and another Chinese firm, Huawei, have in recent years zoomed to being

one of the world’s top mobile phone manufacturers, eating into the market

share of leading Western companies.

Ericsson, headquartered in Stockholm, has some 17,848 employees in Sweden

and 90,000 worldwide.

It is the market leader in mobile network equipment ahead of Finnish-German

giant Nokia Siemens, French-based telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent and China’s Huawei.