Brazilian court lifts ZTE’s 5G injunction against Samsung as expert rejects infringement and essentiality claims

Context: 

The dispute is part of a wider global patent licensing and enforcement dispute between ZTE and Samsung over 5G patents:

• The holding of a preliminary injunction (PI) in favor of ZTE was set aside by the Rio de Janeiro State Court of Appeals (February 4, 2026 ip fray article).
• In Germany, the Munich I Regional Court recently handed ZTE major fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) victories against Samsung, finding that Samsung had not acted as a willing licensee and that ZTE was entitled to injunctive relief (April 30, 2026 ip fray article). The Munich court later indicated that ZTE could have demanded up to $798.6 million from Samsung under certain licensing scenarios and proposed a cross-license framework valued at approximately $640 million for five years (May 6, 2026 ip fray article).
• More recently, the unified patent court (UPC) proposed cross-license terms of approximately $640 million for five years or $730 million for six years as part of ongoing efforts to resolve the wider ZTE-Samsung dispute (May 12, 2026 ip fray article).
• Separately, Samsung recently sought security of approximately $335 million (€295 million) in a non-standard essential patent (SEP)UPC dispute involving a Germany-wide injunction (by a different party than ZTE) against its smartphones and tablets (May 8, 2026 ip fray article). While that case concerns different technology and does not involve SEPs, it may provide some indication of the scale of security that Samsung could seek in connection with enforcement of major patent injunctions.