First Huawei filed lawsuits in Germany, France, and Hungary against ZTE for patent and trade mark infringement on the basis that ZTE is infringing a series of Huawei’s patents relating to data card and LTE. As per Huawei, ZTE illegally used a Huawei-registered trademark on some of its data card products.

ZTE has fired back with it's own lawsuit against Huawei for patent infringement over its LTE technologies in China. In the lawsuit, ZTE requested that Huawei stops its violation, pays compensation to ZTE and takes up the legal responsibilities caused by the infringement.

ZTE also said that there will also be a series of legal action taken globally to protect ZTE’s rights on intellectual properties, ensuring its legitimate rights and interests will not be compromised.

Huawei had said earlier that These lawsuits were commenced after ZTE failed to respond to cease and desist letters requiring the company to stop carrying out the infringing acts that are the basis for these proceedings. Huawei had also actively invited ZTE on numerous occasions to enter into cross-patent licensing negotiations but was equally unsuccessful," company said in the statement.

Both companies claim to hold a large set of LTE related patents. As per ZTE, it has a 7% share of the total LTE essential patentsdeclared on the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) online database of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute as of 30th November 2010.