Context: The standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing dispute between Huawei and MediaTek is getting more attention now, in no small part due to Huawei having recently filed two Unified Patent Court (UPC) complaints (April 11, 2025 ip fray article). Previously, MediaTek case against Huawei in the UK, with a throw-in-the-kitchen-sink range of claims from antitrust to FRAND to declaratory judgment to infringement, survived a jurisdictional challenge, as the hurdle at that stage is low (March 2025 LinkedIn post by ip fray).
What’s new: Today Mr Justice Richard Meade of the High Court of Justice for England & Wales (EWHC) held a four-hour hearing and granted an application by MediaTek to expedite the FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) trial. It will be held in February 2026, which is relatively soon but four months later than MediaTek’s preferred October 2025 date. A renewed application by Huawei to stay the UK proceedings will be decided by Mr Justice Thomas Leech in a separate proceeding and could, theoretically, vacate the FRAND trial date. It became known as a result of the hearing that Huawei has already won a couple of Brazilian preliminary injunctions against MediaTek, one of which MediaTek became aware of only during today’s hearing.
Direct impact: Today’s decision only has case management implications. The dispute has miles to go. Given that MediaTek manufacturers in China and itss top 10 customers are all based in China, whatever comes out of the UK proceedings may ultimately fail to move the needle in the parties’ licensing negotiations.
Wider ramifications: MediaTek is complaining that Huawei wants it to take a patent license at the chipset level, but as discussed further below, Mediatek is thereby contradicting its own positions on Qualcomm’s refusal to license chipset makers. While it is not unusual for litigants to take different positions when the shoe is on the other foot, it is an unprecedented level of consistency that a company which, through testimony and in various other ways, supported antitrust action against Qualcomm over not licensing patents at the chipset level is now pursuing (even if the focus appears to be on FRAND claims under contract law) an antitrust claim against a company for actually being prepared to grant precisely that kind of license.
Mr Justice Meade asked counsel for both parties critical — but not hostile — questions. When he announced his decision on the record, he referred to the case law of the England & Wales Court of Appeal (EWCA) on interim licenses and, generally, on UK jurisdiction over those sorts of FRAND claims.
It is fair to say that Mr Justice Meade, a former patent litigator, is far from a judicial activist. The Panasonic v. Xiaomi case that gave rise to the first-ever interim SEP license was pending before him for the most part (though not the interim license part per se), but Panasonic had committed to grant a license on terms to be set by the English courts and walked back, which understandably annoyed Mr Justice Meade.
That said, MediaTek v. Huawei threatens to become another example of unfettered extraterritorial overreach by the English courts in a SEP context. Over Huawei’s objection, the court scheduled a FRAND trial without establishing any liability, and MediaTek’s portfolio is neither large nor battle-tested. But above all, Huawei’s counsel explained that they have not been allowed to sell network infrastructure in the country for a number of years and in a few years’ time even the existing installations will have been replaced. When a dispute has its center of gravity so clearly in another country, the UK judiciary should exercise restraint. But the EWHC is bound by the EWCA’s unreasonable decisions in this regard.
Sooner or later the courts in other jurisdictions may start to sanction parties for abusing the UK state of affairs. Then it may all come to an end, just like the Munich I Regional Court developed a remedy to antisuit injunctions in the form of pre-emptive anti-antisuit and anti-anti-anti-antisuit injunctions that the UPC is now also prepared to grant. But as long as the English courts just make “declarations” without forcing parties (under the threat of sanctions) to grant licenses, there is neither a need nor a basis for such defensive measures. For now, the most likely outcome is that whatever the result of the UK FRAND proceedings will be, the actual decision will be made elsewhere.
MediaTek contradicting itself
MediaTek makes chipsets that are incorporated into smartphones. Huawei wants MediaTek to license the SEPs it implements. MediaTek, however, argues that what Huawei is doing is discriminatory and prejudicial. That is the very opposite of what MediaTek argued a few years ago when it was one of the companies, alongside Apple and Intel, who wanted antitrust regulators around the globe to force Qualcomm to grant chipset-level SEP licenses.
Hypocrisy is an understatement for first making antitrust arguments over company A’s refusal to do something and later accusing company B of an antitrust violation for wanting to do what company A declined to do.
The district court judgment (later overruled by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit) in Federal Trade Commission v. Qualcomm is still available on the FTC’s website (PDF). Under oath, Finbarr Moynihan, a MediaTek executive, argued that MediaTek’s customers specifically wanted the assurance that MediaTek had licensed Qualcomm’s patents. He blamed MediaTek’s problems in competing with Qualcomm on the latter’s refusal to grant a chipset-level license. Mr. Moynihan’s testimony is found in different sections of the decision, and the refusal-to-license part is discussed in particular detail on pages 114 and 115:
1. 2008 Refusal to License MediaTek
Qualcomm refused its rival MediaTek’s 2008 request for a patent license, and would only enter an agreement that restricted MediaTek’s customer base. Qualcomm’s refusal suppressed MediaTek’s revenues and prevented MediaTek from being able to fund research and development for future generations of modem chips.
Finbarr Moynihan (MediaTek General Manager of Corporate Sales and Business Development) testified that when MediaTek was soliciting customers for its first 3G modem chip, OEMs uniformly told MediaTek that OEMs would not purchase the modem chips until MediaTek had a license from Qualcomm: “[T]he kind of prevailing message from all of the customers I engaged with was that they expected us to have a license agreement with Qualcomm before they would consider purchasing 3G chipsets from MediaTek.” Tr. at 336:13-16. Thus, Moynihan testified that the license requirement “sort of stalled the progress” of MediaTek’s modem chip. Id. at 336:18-20. Moynihan testified that “somebody in the company reached out at some point to seek a license agreement from Qualcomm.” Id. at 336:23-25. However, the negotiations went slowly, Moynihan testified: “We would have liked if they had gone faster. We felt like they were sort of maybe being slow.” Id. at 337:8-10.
Ultimately, Qualcomm refused to enter a license, and would only offer an agreement called the CDMA ASIC Agreement. Id. at 337:11-17; see JX0050-001 (CDMA ASIC Agreement). The CDMA ASIC Agreement restricted MediaTek to selling modem chips only to “Authorized Purchasers,” defined as “only those entities which have been granted a license by Qualcomm under at least Qualcomm’s CDMA Technically Necessary Patents . . . but for only so long as such entities remain so licensed by Qualcomm,” and included lists of Authorized Purchasers. JX0050006, -067. Thus, the CDMA ASIC Agreement gave Qualcomm the power to control to whom MediaTek, Qualcomm’s rival, sold modem chips.
In addition, the CDMA ASIC Agreement imposed onerous reporting requirements. The agreement required MediaTek to report to Qualcomm “specific quantities” of modem chips that MediaTek sold to each Authorized Purchaser. JX0050-055 to -056. Thus, MediaTek was forced to give its rival Qualcomm sensitive business information about MediaTek’s customers and the quantity of chips MediaTek sold to each customer.
In part due to the delay caused by the need for a license and Qualcomm’s refusal, Finbarr Moynihan (MediaTek General Manager of Customers Sales and Business Development) testified that MediaTek’s modem chip was outdated by the time it entered the market: “By the time we were really pushing it [in] the market, the requirements had moved on from what features the 6268 could deliver.” Tr. at 338:10-12. Moynihan testified that Qualcomm’s refusal to license also hampered MediaTek’s ability to generate the customer base necessary to invest in future generations: “So not being able to generate profit revenue on 3G I think impacted our ability to invest in 4G.” Id. at 338:18-339:3.
MediaTek was part of the group of companies lobbying the FTC and other competition authorities to bring and pursue cases against Qualcomm. After the May 2019 district court decision, MediaTek also filed an amicus curiae brief that described Qualcomm’s refusal to grant chipset-level SEP licenses as an antitrust violation:
On page 17 (page 23 by the numbering of the PDF document), MediaTek outlined its vision for a license deal with Qualcomm:
With a license, MediaTek would no longer need fear the devastating impact of whatever discriminatory or exclusionary means Qualcomm devises to evade injunctive relief as to its device-level licenses. Instead, customers could choose to purchase chips from MediaTek and thereby avoid a licensing relationship with Qualcomm altogether. Moreover, chip-level licensing would ensure that Qualcomm could not continue to tax the sale of competitors’ chips, thereby raising their cost, through supra-FRAND device-based royalties.
Now that Huawei wants MediaTek to take a license, MediaTek says Huawei should collect patent royalties from handset makers: MediaTek’s customers.