ZTE can't buy chips from America – but can still get sued for patent infringement in the US Chinese phone maker ZTE will have to face a patent infringement lawsuit in the US, despite its handsets being effectively barred from sale in America. On Wednesday a Northern Texas US District Court judge tossed the Chinese company's motion to dismiss a patent infringement case filed by a Texas-based mobile software developer …
ZTE had been doing business in Texas, and in the United States, in the past, selling smartphones which may have violated the patents in question, so why should its subsequent fate protect it from lawsuits?
Of course, it could simply ignore any settlement that isn't approved by courts of a jurisdiction in which it is still doing business, unless it has plans of returning to the United States someday.
This whole thing with ZTE just smells bad... on both sides. They steal and if DownUndaRob is right, then they're getting hit by a patent troll.
As a solution, maybe ZTE needs to "close up it's doors", declare themselves bankrupt and in a week or two start again under a new name. Seems to be the way it's done here in the States.
If I didnt think the patents were likely to be so obvious, so wide ranging and so completely pathetic to be a nonsense, and if I didnt know that the likes of Microsoft and Google regularly and with impunity violated patents held by others I would think this might be a reasonable thing to be taken to court. The US is busy trying to fund its entire budget deficit by fining everyone and anyone for anything, its actually time the rest of the world ignored this nation and traded with anyone else but them, just ignore them and leave them alone in the corner
Sadly, Dave 15, the UK government is set on abandoning business with the EU (no-deal hard Brexit is their clear intention) and setting up a trade treaty with the USA where the terms will inevitably be interoreted by Ameican courts to mean whatever is most beneficial to American companies regardless of what the actual wording of the treaty (which will in anycase have beeen forced as far as possible by the American negotiators towards giving American companies the rights to do what they like and British companies no rights at all, to allow the US administration to charge what tariffs they like and oblige British government never to increase tariffs on American exports, to oblige british suppliers to match American safety regulations and forbid Britain to enforce British safety regulations on gods supplied to British companiesor consumers by American companies.
So Britain will not be part of any "rest off the world" that ignores the USA and leaves them alone in their corner. Personally I find that very sad.
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