UK tech sues Huawei and Goodix for patent infringement

A small British technology company has accused Huawei and Goodix, China’s largest developer of smartphone fingerprint sensors, of infringing on its technology and has launched legal proceedings against both companies.

WaveTouch, a UK registered and owned company that was spun out of Technical University in Copenhagen, has filed claims against the two Chinese companies in the District Court of Düsseldorf, one of the main European patent courts.

WaveTouch alleges that a system that it designed to improve the accuracy of fingerprint readers underneath modern smartphone screens has been replicated by Goodix for a range of ultra-thin chips and used in millions of smartphones. It said Huawei has incorporated the disputed chip technology into a number of its smartphones including the P40 and the Mate 40.

Jørgen Korsgaard Jensen, founder of WaveTouch, told the Financial Times: “I have always been very much in favour of establishing [a] close and good cross border relationship between Europe and China as I think the mix of different backgrounds and cultures can create innovative solutions and ideas. Today, the majority of employees in WaveTouch are employed in our Shenzhen based subsidiary and in this light it saddens me even more to see this kind of behaviour disrespecting intellectual property rights.”

Huawei and Goodix declined to comment on WaveTouch’s allegations. “We, as an innovation-oriented company, respect and always take intellectual property protection seriously,” said a Goodix spokeswoman.

A separate patent infringement case made by Shanghai Sili Microelectronics Technology against Goodix in Beijing was withdrawn this week.

WaveTouch and Goodix have offices located only a few blocks away from each other in the Software Industry Base in the Nanshan District of Shenzhen. The two companies operate in the fiercely competitive market for biometric security in smartphones and the ultra-thin chip, which sits between the screen and the battery in a handset, has proved to be a key innovation with around 30 smartphones released by Huawei, Xiaomi, One Plus, Oppo, Motorola and Samsung using the technology.

WaveTouch says both Goodix and the handset manufacturers, including Huawei, have used the technology despite being made aware of the potential patent infringement by its law firm Norton Rose Fulbright in January last year.

WaveTouch, which licenses its technology, estimates that up to 50m sensors have been sold using the micro lens design, equivalent to £300m of revenue. “They are spinning gold out of this,” said Jensen.

WaveTouch started developing its “micro lens” technology for use in smartphone fingerprint sensors that sit under smartphone screens in 2017. It filed its first patent application in May 2018 and that filing entered the international filing stage and a Chinese utility model patent application a year later. The patent has been approved by the European Patent Office but is still in the administrative phase of being granted.

Goodix launched its own micro lens-based technology and filed its own patent in early 2019. WaveTouch alleges that the initial chips used in handsets at that stage were not based on the same light absorbing system as its own technology. However, a Xiaomi handset launched in November 2019 included a Goodix ultra-thin chipset that, according to WaveTouch’s legal filing, was a one-to-one copy of the design detailed in its 2018 patent.

WaveTouch said it initially received a positive response from Goodix when it contacted the company about the alleged infringement only to find that Goodix has started invalidation proceedings against the UK company’s patent application later in the year.