BREAKING: InterDigital, Xiaomi renew patent license agreement without litigation; five-year term; cellular, WiFi, HEVC patents included

This morning, InterDigital made a filing with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States reporting the following deal:

InterDigital, Inc. (“InterDigital”) today announced it has renewed a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty bearing license with a major Chinese vendor.

The renewed license has a term of five years and covers the vendor’s cellular products, including its smartphones and other cellular-enabled devices, under InterDigital’s standard essential cellular, WiFi, and HEVC patents.

While the licensee is not named, we’ve tracked various license agreements in the industry and everything points to Xiaomi. We do not expect to be able to obtain official confirmation given that the name was not disclosed, so we’re not even trying. But the Xiaomi license was already an earlier InterDigital filing with the SEC revealed that seven patent license agreements were scheduled to expirate at the end of 2025, corresponding to a collective value of more than $90 million in 2024 recurring annual revenues (22% at the time, but InterDigital has grown since). The filing mentioned only two company names in this regard, of which Xiaomi is the only Chinese one

The fact that InterDigital considers this one a “major” vendor limits the number of possibilities. For example, OPPO took its license only in 2024, and ZTE signed a 2024 deal with InterDigital as well. Furthermore, it can’t be a company like Transsion with which InterDigital has yet to reach a first license agreement. Litigation is pending against Transsion (October 31, 2025 ip fray article), and while Transsion will always argue that its phones have a lower average selling price and that the geographic focus of its sales is different, it still doesn’t help Transsion in the FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) context that other major Chinese vendors are licensed, and in this case renewed without litigation.

Presumably the parties negotiated until shortly after New Year’s Day, so the risk of litigation was probably imminent (apart from some license agreements in the industry having been known to come with short standstill periods after New Year’s just to avoid having to bring litigation during the Holiday Season). But it looks like they worked it out.

Both InterDigital and Xiaomi can be reasonably described as tough negotiators who are not afraid to litigate, but clearly prefer to reserve that course of action for situations in which they believe they must stand their ground (e.g., we have recently reported on the Munich I Regional Court having scheduled a Datang v. Xiaomi hearing for March 2026).

InterDigital continues to make headway on multiple fronts, and by coincidence is a party to the three proceedings we have most recently commented on: