Huawei, HP ink Wi-Fi deal; UPC labels pool refusenik ‘unwilling’; Wilus brings fresh claims against TP-Link; call issued for AV2 patents; plus much more
Welcome to the latest edition of the Sisvel Insights weekly round-up, aggregating news stories, analyses and data points affecting the SEP world that have caught our eye over the past seven days.
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Last week, Huawei announced the conclusion of a multi-year global patent cross-licensing agreement with HP covering “certain Wi-Fi patents”.
HP became a licensee under Sisvel’s Wi-Fi 6 patent pool – which counted Huawei as a founding patent owner – back in November 2025. The new bilateral deal, it was reported, relates to Huawei patents from earlier Wi-Fi generations not included in the Wi-Fi 6 pool offering or the successor Wi-Fi Multimode programme.
Few could have predicted that this would become the rare SEP licensing story to attract mainstream press coverage. What is, in our market, a fairly unremarkable transaction was portrayed by US news outlets as a surprising instance of collaboration between a Silicon Valley giant and a Chinese technology powerhouse.
But as HP explained in a statement: “Standard-essential patent licenses covering Wi‑Fi technology – something used broadly across the industry – are routine for companies whose products connect to Wi‑Fi.”
Standards are fundamental to how the world stays connected and patent licensing enables continued investment in these standards. Too many – in industry, in media and in government – do not understand this. That continues to pose a risk to the ecosystem.
In other news, the UPC has become the latest court to weigh in on a case in which an implementer demanded that a patent pool licensor make a bilateral offer in order to comply with FRAND. The Hamburg Local Division granted Fraunhofer an injunction against HMD, ruling that the latter was not justified in insisting on bilateral terms. A licensor, the court said, generally need only provide one route to a FRAND licence and participation in a pool may satisfy this requirement.
Elsewhere, Wilus brought new Wi-Fi patent claims against TP-Link in the Central District of California; and news emerged of new patent pool efforts in the AV1/AV2 space.
Please note that the inclusion of a piece in the list below does not signify agreement with what is stated in the linked article – just that we believe it is of interest and worth flagging.
Market
Huawei has announced a multi-year patent cross-licence agreement with HP Inc covering certain patents outside the scope of the US company’s Sisvel Wi-Fi 6 pool licence. Read more (Huawei press release)
Access Advance has announced that it will explore the formation of an AV1/AV2 device and software patent pool. Read more (Access Advance)
Sun Patent Trust has reached a settlement with Vivo, resulting in the withdrawal of UPC litigation over cellular SEPs. Read more (ip fray) 🔒
Malikie Innovations has settled a licensing dispute with Xiaomi involving lawsuits at the UPC and in India. Read more (ip fray)🔒
Legal
The UPC Local Division in Hamburg has declared HMD to be an unwilling licensee in a dispute with Fraunhofer; HMD had rejected an AAC pool licence offer and demanded bilateral terms from the German patent owner. Read more (ip fray)🔒. See also MLex 🔒
Wilus, a licensor in the Sisvel Wi-Fi Multimode pool, has brought new US patent claims against TP-Link, asserting four patents in the Central District of California. Read more (IAM)🔒. See also ip fray🔒
InterDigital has argued that Disney’s use of VP9 to avoid a UPC injunction delivers an inferior experience to customers while continuing to infringe SEPs it has not licensed. Read more (IAM) 🔒
The big three US telecom carriers, backed by equipment vendors Nokia and Ericsson, have prevailed in a Texas jury trial against ASUS-backed licensing firm Celerity IP. Read more (ip fray)
Policy & Opinion
China’s government has announced plans to make a vast trove of IP-related data available for AI model training and other commercial uses. Read more (MLex) 🔒
Former USPTO Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart has given her first interview as President and CEO of the Council for Innovation Promotion. Read more (ip fray)
Strategy & Analysis
The Sisvel POS patent pool presents an opportunity to simplify SEP licensing in a vertical where bilateral deals and disputes are beginning to emerge. Read more (MLex)🔒
A full translation of the FRAND guidelines issued by the Seventh Chamber of the Munich I Regional Court has been published. Read more (Dr Stephan Dorn on LinkedIn)
