HP Licenses Huawei Wi-Fi Patents Despite the Entity List

HP Inc. signed a multi-year global patent cross-licensing agreement with Huawei Technologies covering certain Wi-Fi patents, including the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard, the companies announced Wednesday. The deal gives the Palo Alto PC maker access to Huawei’s standard-essential patents while granting Huawei reciprocal rights to HP patents; neither side disclosed financial terms.

HP called the arrangement routine. An HP spokesperson said: “This is a standard-essential patent licence covering Wi-Fi technology. It is not new, and does not represent a broader strategic or commercial relationship, partnership, or collaboration with Huawei.”

What the Cross-License Covers

Standard-essential patents, or SEPs, protect inventions that companies must use to make products compatible with an industry standard such as Wi-Fi. Licenses for them are common among makers of computers, printers, phones and routers. Huawei said the new direct agreement expands beyond earlier pool access and reaches Wi-Fi 7.

• Scope: multi-year global cross-license of selected Huawei Wi-Fi patents plus reciprocal HP rights
• Standards: Wi-Fi 6 foundation plus Wi-Fi 7 coverage
• Status: no product collaboration, no joint hardware, no disclosed royalty dollars
• Timing: announced hours before HP’s third-quarter fiscal 2026 earnings

Huawei’s Chief Intellectual Property Officer Alan Fan described the pact as proof of independent innovation in information and communications technology. Through patent licensing, he said, Huawei shares standardized technologies that deliver better experiences to consumers worldwide.

The 2025 Dispute Path That Led Here

The latest deal sits on top of earlier litigation and a patent-pool settlement. Huawei had already built a large Wi-Fi 6 portfolio and joined the Sisvel Wi-Fi 6 pool as a founding member in 2022.

1. August 2025: Huawei sued HP at Europe’s Unified Patent Court, alleging unlicensed use of a Wi-Fi 6 patent, according to intellectual-property publication IAM.
2. November 2025: HP joined the Sisvel Wi-Fi 6 patent pool after mediation ordered by U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap and facilitated by former Judge David Folsom. The move ended actions by Huawei, Philips and Wilus.
3. November 18, 2025: Sisvel announced HP as a licensee with one-stop access to approximately 2,000 patents in the Sisvel pool (245 families) judged essential to 802.11ax.
4. August 26, 2026: the companies announced the broader multi-year direct cross-license that adds Wi-Fi 7 rights.

Steven Geiszler, who represented Huawei in the talks and earlier served nearly a decade as the company’s senior U.S. IP counsel before opening his own firm with Huawei as main client, called the reciprocal HP rights “valuable.”

Huawei’s Wi-Fi Licensing Machine

Huawei has turned its wireless patents into a steady revenue line even while cut off from many U.S. suppliers. By the end of 2025 more than 1.6 billion consumer electronic devices, excluding mobile phones, had used Huawei’s Wi-Fi-related inventions. The figure stood at more than 1.2 billion by the end of 2024.

Huawei is also a founding member of Sisvel’s Wi-Fi Multimode pool that bundles Wi-Fi 6 and 7. The company says implementers can take licenses bilaterally or through pools on FRAND terms. Close to 40 entities already license the Wi-Fi 6 pool, including Cisco, Netgear, Acer and now HP.

On X, Huawei’s own announcement drew more than two million views. Fan’s follow-up post stressed independent innovation and shared standardized technologies. Crowd replies focused less on security politics and more on the quiet shift: Chinese R&D is now something Western brands pay to use rather than simply copy.

Why the Entity List Does Not Block This Deal

Washington added Huawei to the Entity List in 2019, imposing a license requirement with a presumption of denial for items subject to the Export Administration Regulations. That cut Huawei off from advanced U.S. chips, Google services and many software updates.

Patent licensing sits outside those hardware and software controls. SEPs for open standards such as Wi-Fi are typically offered under FRAND commitments precisely so any manufacturer can build interoperable products. Reuters noted the restrictions do not automatically bar patent-licensing agreements. HP therefore faces no legal barrier to paying for the patents it needs to ship Wi-Fi-enabled PCs and printers worldwide.

The irony is structural. The same policy that starved Huawei of U.S. components left the company free to pour resources into standards work. Huawei now holds one of the largest declared essential-patent portfolios for Wi-Fi 7 after a decade of research. U.S. device makers still need those patents to ship modern hardware.

China’s Growing Royalty Export Line

The HP deal fits a wider pattern of Chinese firms collecting IP income abroad. In the first five months of 2026 China’s exports of IP royalties reached 45.5 billion yuan (about $6.77 billion), up 64.9 percent year-on-year, according to officials from the China National Intellectual Property Administration cited by Global Times.

Huawei alone reported roughly $630 million in patent licensing revenue for 2024. The company has signed more than 260 patent licensing agreements across the ICT industry and continues to invest heavily: CNY 192.3 billion in R&D in 2025, or about 21.8 percent of sales. That reinvestment cycle is what Fan and Geiszler both emphasize when they praise patent pools.

Similar dynamics appear in other restricted Chinese tech. Huawei’s push into lightweight operating systems, for example, produced HarmonyOS running on just 64KB of RAM for IoT devices. Parallel U.S. restrictions, such as the FCC bans on new foreign humanoid robots, aim to wall off hardware markets while leaving pure IP flows largely open.

What the Deal Means for HP’s PC Business

HP was the world’s second-largest PC maker with a 21.3 percent market share behind Lenovo, according to Gartner data cited by Reuters. Nearly every unit ships with Wi-Fi. Paying a predictable SEP royalty, whether through Sisvel or the new direct deal, is simply part of the bill of materials.

The company was spun out as a separate firm in 2015 after the old Hewlett-Packard split. It still designs and sells printers, PCs and peripherals that must stay compatible with the latest 802.11 standards. A multi-year cross-license removes the risk of further European or U.S. infringement suits and gives Huawei a reverse license that may prove useful in other product lines.

No one expects HP to start co-branding routers with Huawei or sharing chip designs. The public statements on both sides stress the narrow, transactional nature of the arrangement. That narrowness is exactly why the deal can proceed under current rules.

Standards Keep Running Even When Suppliers Are Locked Out

This agreement is a strong testament to Huawei’s persistent independent innovation in cutting-edge fields in ICT. Through patent licensing, Huawei shares its innovation with the industry, particularly in the area of standardized technologies, which brings leading technological experiences to consumers worldwide.

Alan Fan, Chief Intellectual Property Officer, Huawei

Wi-Fi is a global standard. Once a company contributes core technology and declares the resulting patents essential, FRAND licensing becomes the mechanism that keeps the standard open. Huawei’s contributions to OFDMA, multi-user MIMO and multi-link operation for Wi-Fi 6 and 7 are now embedded in the stack that every major PC brand uses.

Other licensees already include Amazon, Sony, Microsoft, Asus, Acer and a long list of networking firms. The Sisvel pools lower transaction costs by offering a single agreement for hundreds of patent families. Bilateral deals such as the new HP-Huawei pact fill remaining gaps, especially for newer generations like Wi-Fi 7.

The entity list can keep Huawei chips out of U.S. networks and Google services out of Huawei phones. It cannot rewrite the IEEE 802.11 standards or erase the patents that implement them. HP’s decision to take the license is therefore both unremarkable and revealing: the royalty check still clears.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a standard-essential patent in Wi-Fi?

A standard-essential patent protects an invention that must be used to comply with a technical standard such as IEEE 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) or 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7). Owners commit to license these patents on FRAND terms so any manufacturer can build interoperable products without reinventing the core technology.

How much does Huawei charge for its Wi-Fi patents?

Huawei set its royalty at US$0.50 per consumer-grade device for both Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 technologies. Implementers can take the license bilaterally or through patent pools such as Sisvel’s Multimode program; the company has not published different rates for enterprise equipment.

Did the U.S. entity list stop Huawei from licensing patents?

No. The 2019 Entity List restricts exports of U.S.-origin items and technology to Huawei under a presumption of denial, but pure patent licensing of SEPs for open standards is not automatically prohibited. Multiple U.S. and European firms have continued to take Huawei Wi-Fi licenses since the listing.

What was the Sisvel Wi-Fi 6 pool’s role with HP?

In November 2025 HP became a licensee of the Sisvel Wi-Fi 6 pool, gaining access to roughly 2,000 essential patents from Huawei, Philips, Wilus and other owners. That single agreement ended pending infringement suits and paved the way for the broader 2026 direct cross-license that added Wi-Fi 7 rights.

How many devices already use Huawei’s Wi-Fi inventions?

Huawei reported that more than 1.6 billion consumer electronic devices excluding mobile phones had incorporated its Wi-Fi-related patented inventions by the end of 2025. The count stood above 1.2 billion at the end of 2024, showing rapid cumulative adoption across PCs, routers, printers and other connected gear.