China's Supreme People's Court has upheld the validity of two Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. patents covering 3G and 4G telecommunications standards, rejecting appeals by HMD Global Oy, the Finnish company that makes Nokia-branded phones, according to judicial rulings published by the court.

The top court issued the two second-instance administrative judgments on July 23 and published them on July 31, docketed as (2024) Zui Gao Fa Zhi Xing Zhong No. 544 and No. 1176, the rulings showed. Both decisions affirmed earlier determinations by the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) and the Beijing Intellectual Property Court that the patents were valid.

The patents in dispute are titled "Method and Device for Sending Control Signaling" (Chinese Patent No. ZL201110269715.3) and "Bandwidth Allocation Method, Device, User Equipment and Base Station" (Chinese Patent No. ZL201380002080.8). The CNIPA had issued decisions in July and October 2023 respectively, keeping both patents fully in force. 

The legal battle stems from three patent infringement lawsuits Huawei filed against HMD in 2022 at the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court, with docket numbers (2022) Yue 03 Min Chu No. 7127, 7125 and 7129, which are understood to allege infringement of Huawei's patents covering technologies from 3G to 5G. The Shenzhen court held hearings in October and November 2023, as well as May and October 2024.

HMD also challenged a third Huawei patent covering Polar Code encoding technology (Chinese Patent No. ZL201810211560.X), a core 5G patent, which received a partial invalidation ruling from the CNIPA in September 2023.

HMD, which licenses the Nokia brand and trademark from Nokia Corporation but does not hold Nokia's patent portfolio, has additionally been engaged in litigation with Huawei before the Unified Patent Court in Europe.

The Supreme Court's ruling affirms the stability of Huawei's patent assets in its home jurisdiction and represents a setback for HMD's defensive strategy of challenging the validity of asserted patents in response to infringement claims. Huawei remains one of the world's largest filers of standard-essential patents in the telecommunications sector.