Nokia and Honor sign 5G patent license agreement

Nokia announced it has signed a 5G patent license agreement with Honor. This is the Finnish company’s fourth major smartphone agreement in the last 12 months, once again confirming the importance of the patents Nokia still owns.

As per Nokia’s statement, the terms of the agreement remain confidential between parties. Nokia has been recently involved in a sales ban that prevented Oppo and Vivo smartphones from being sold in some European countries.

Honor decided that it’s better to avoid any sales ban on its smartphones and signed this 5G patent license agreement with Nokia.

“As both 5G SEP holder and implementor, Honor highly respects IP rights and strongly believes that reasonable value of IP is important to the development of mobile industry. The conclusion of the patent cross-license agreement shows Honor's commitment on innovation to enabling a smart life across all scenarios and all channels, for all people,” said Wenyu Zhou, Head of Global Intellectual Property at Honor.

Nokia has a massive portfolio of around 20,000 patent families, including over 6,000 patent families that are essential to 5G technology. These patents are the result of more than €140 billion invested in R&D since 2000.

The Finnish company heavily invested in R&D so that other companies can license and use its technologies without the need to make their own investments. It’s a smart, profitable business that’s hard to replicate without the workforce capable to come up with innovation.