Recently, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) made a move to acquire the wireless network assets of Motorola, but the acquisition failed to obtain approval from the Anti-monopoly bureau of China’s Ministry of Commerce. The review of the case has been postponed for 60 days, setting back plans to complete the transaction within the first quarter of 2011.

Previously, the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois had issued a preliminary injunction which restrained Motorola from transferring any of Huawei’s trade secrets to NSN in a proposed USD1.2 billion transaction. It also called for Motorola to hire a qualified third party to conduct an investigation to ensure Huawei's confidential information had been securely removed from any assets being sold to NSN.

While this particular case has its own set of tribulations, it has been preceded by a litany of previous skirmishes. Just one day after Motorola announced the proposed USD1.2 billion deal with NSN, Motorola added Huawei to the list of defendants in a lawsuit that the company filed two years ago against a company named Lemko and its employees.

Ten years ago, as a newcomer to the telecom market, Huawei collaborated with Motorola as an OEM in order to fuel its expansion and to grow its customer base. At that time, the partnership seemed to be a win-win solution, through which the two companies shared their complementary advantages, and their collaboration flourished during those years. Motorola spent over USD878 million to purchase Huawei’s equipment.

Through the introduction of innovative technologies, however, Huawei established a stronger foothold and grew to become the world’s second largest telecom equipment vendor. Its wireless market share grew from 10.9% in 2008 to 20.8% in 2010 (source: Dell’oro, February 2011) while sales revenue on wireless base stations soared to number two globally. Its products and solutions are currently deployed by 45 of the 50 top-tier telecom operators in the world.

As the February court ruling and other recent developments indicate, Cisco filed a lawsuit against Huawei as early as 2003 for intellectual property infringement. That case ended in a court settlement with Cisco withdrawing its suit against Huawei with no further requests for Huawei to make any changes to its products.

However, even long after that case was dismissed, Huawei continues to be dogged with an ill-repute for alleged IPR infringement.

It is worth mentioning here that Huawei is also known for its track record for innovation and was the world’s second largest patent seeker across all industries in 2009, ranking ahead of every other telecom vendor.On a strategic level, Huawei is not the same company it was eight years ago. At that time, Huawei was a small player with no solid international grounding that had just started to expand globally. Today, it is the world's second largest telecommunications equipment supplier.