China telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. has reportedly started to receive payment for patent royalties from Apple Inc., according to a report by the Beijing Youth Daily on Tuesday, May 10.
The report cited data from the Guangdong Intellectual Property Office which showed that 769 patents, relating to the GSM, UMTS and LTE wireless communication technologies, were licensed by Huawei to Apple in 2015, while Apple only gave 98 patents to Huawei.
Huawei, however, did not disclose details of the patent deal, the report said.
Huawei had entered into similar patent deals with other IT giants such as Sweden's Ericsson AB, in which it sought for an extension of a global patent deal in January that enabled both companies to have access to each other's patents and technologies.
About 52,550 patent applications have been filed by Huawei in China, as of the end of 2015, while about 30,613 applications have been filed by the company abroad.
The report said that a total of 50,377 patents had been granted to Huawei by the end of 2015.
According to Huawei's annual report released on April 1, a total of 59.6 billion yuan ($9.15 billion) had been invested by Huawei in research and development in 2015, an increase of 46.1 percent year-on-year.
On the other hand, Apple had only invested $8.5 billion on research and development in 2015, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Patents have become increasingly important to many Chinese technology companies. Huawei ranked no. 3 among all Chinese tech companies in 2015, having filed 3,216 patent applications.
Data from the State Intellectual Property Office released in April showed that ZTE Corp., Huawei's rival, was on top of the list with 3,516 patent applications, while handset maker Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp. ranked second with 3,338 applications filed.
Huawei said that it always abided by the rules of international intellectual property and solved its intellectual property issues in several ways, which include cross patent licensing and business cooperation, among others.