Qualcomm in talks to settle patent dispute with Huawei: WSJ

Chipmaker Qualcomm  is in talks to settle a patent dispute with China’s Huawei Technologies and could reach an agreement in the coming weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The negotiations between Qualcomm and Huawei are well along, according to the report.

Qualcomm declined to comment, while Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Qualcomm is fending off a $117 billion hostile takeover bid from Broadcom. Broadcom has said it would smooth Qualcomm’s rocky relations with customers if it took over the San Diego mobile chipmaker, which has prompted Qualcomm to try to pre-empt those efforts by patching up customer disputes on its own.

Qualcomm has been in a dispute with two major patent license customers: Apple and an unnamed licensee that stopped paying royalties in April 2017. Analysts believed that licensee was Huawei.

That belief grew stronger in January when Qualcomm announced it had reached a set of agreements licensing and research agreements with Samsung Electronics. That ruled out the South Korean Android handset maker as the mystery non-paying customer.