Defendant
11 cases as defendant.
ZTE Corporation (Chinese: 中兴通讯股份有限公司; commonly "ZTE") is a publicly traded telecom and ICT equipment maker headquartered at ZTE Plaza, Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, China. Founded in 1985 by Hou Weigui, it trades on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (000063.SZ) and Hong Kong Stock Exchange (0763.HK). It has no corporate parent. Employee counts reported for recent years range from roughly 65,000 to 72,000 depending on source; FY2024 revenue was RMB 121.3 billion (about US$17 billion) with net profit of RMB 8.4 billion, per the company's 2024 annual report.
ZTE designs, develops, manufactures and sells end-to-end communications equipment and terminals across three reported segments: carrier networks (wireless/RAN, 5G and 5G-A, optical transport, core networks, switches/routers, microwave, plus servers, storage and data-center infrastructure — 58% of FY2024 revenue); consumer business (nubia and RedMagic smartphones, FWA/MBB and home terminals, cloud PCs — 26.7%); and government/enterprise ICT solutions (15.3%). It also sells digital-energy and power products. It is a genuine operating company, not a non-practicing entity.
Its tracked litigation posture is narrow and defensive: 0 cases as plaintiff, 1 as defendant. The sole tracked matter is Innovative Display Technologies LLC v. ZTE Corp., filed 2013-06-28 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division — the plaintiff-friendly venue where many 2011–2014 NPE campaigns were filed. ZTE appears as an accused infringer, not an asserter.
That case is external context rather than a ZTE initiative. Innovative Display Technologies LLC was an Austin, Texas-based shell licensor affiliated with Acacia Research Group; it asserted "light emitting panel assembly" backlight patents acquired via Rambus (originally from Lumitex). The 2013 filing was part of a coordinated wave against Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei, BlackBerry and others, and the same ZTE-family suit also drew inter partes reviews at the PTAB. ZTE's single appearance is consistent with a large operating vendor being targeted over display components, not with any patent-assertion activity of its own.
Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. filed suit against ZTE Corp. and ZTE (USA) Inc. in W.D. Tex. asserting US 6,566,805. The case was closed by voluntary dismissal, with an order closing the case on 2020-05-11.
Maxell sued ZTE Corp. and ZTE USA Inc. in the Eastern District of Texas, Texarkana Division. Google Patents/Unified Patents linked the case to US 7,324,487, but the narrative could not retrieve the full asserted-patent list; the case was terminated on March 12, 2019.
IPA Technologies, Inc. sued ZTE Corp. and ZTE (USA), Inc. in S.D. Cal. asserting US 6,523,061 and US 6,742,021.
Related FISI campaign case filed in N.D. Tex. against ZTE. Reported as settled via license. Narrative notes '319 was not independently confirmed as pleaded.
Complaint asserted eight U.S. patents, including U.S. 8,736,729 and U.S. 8,339,493. In or about July 2018 a jury found ZTE liable for willful infringement and awarded Maxell approximately $43.3 million; the narrative notes it could not confirm whether the trial verdict specifically rested on the '729 patent.
Patent infringement suit filed by Innovative Display Technologies LLC against ZTE Corp. and others in the Eastern District of Texas. The case is part of the IDT campaign involving U.S. Patent 8,215,816 and related patents.
ITC investigation asserting claims 1, 6, 7, 9–11 and 13–16 of the '336 patent. ALJ found no violation of Section 337; Commission affirmed no-infringement findings and terminated the investigation. Several respondents settled earlier.
District-court counterpart to the ITC case asserting the '336 patent. Stipulated final judgment of non-infringement entered Nov. 13, 2015; appealed. Federal Circuit affirmed in part and vacated in part on claim construction and remanded. Further appeals filed in 2018; mandate in 18-1439 issued June 19, 2019.
A related action against ZTE Corp. was bifurcated into this E.D. Tex. case and settled on the same terms as the principal ZTE matter.
Family-level FISI enforcement action against ZTE Corp. in the Northern District of Texas, listed as docketed. The narrative does not confirm that 8541983 specifically was asserted.
FISI asserted the '550, '111, '586, and '766 Fischer patents plus the Veselic '655 patent against ZTE. The case proceeded through claim construction and summary-judgment briefing; ZTE's IPRs on the '550 were denied and all challenged claims were upheld in IPR2018-00111.