HP Signs Multi-Year Wi-Fi Patent Deal With Blacklisted Huawei

HP Inc. announced Wednesday it signed a multi-year cross-licensing agreement with Huawei Technologies covering Wi-Fi patents, including the newer Wi-Fi 7 standard, according to Reuters. Huawei confirmed the deal the same day.

The arrangement gives HP access to Huawei's Wi-Fi patent portfolio. Huawei gets access to HP's patents in return. Neither company disclosed financial terms, and Huawei did not spell out exactly which HP patents it's getting, Reuters reported.

Huawei has sat on the U.S. Commerce Department's Entity List since May 2019, blacklisted over national security concerns. That designation generally bars American suppliers from providing Huawei with certain U.S.-origin technology without government approval. It's the reason Google cut ties with Huawei's Android licensing years ago and why U.S. carriers were ordered to strip Huawei gear from domestic networks.

HP was quick to draw a line around what this deal actually is. "This is a standard-essential patent license covering Wi-Fi technology, something used broadly across the industry and routine for companies whose products connect to Wi-Fi," an HP spokesperson said, according to CNBC. "It is not new, and does not represent a broader strategic or commercial relationship, partnership, or collaboration with Huawei."

That distinction matters legally. Standard-essential patents cover inventions that manufacturers effectively must use to make products compatible with an industry standard like Wi-Fi. Licensing them is common practice for any company that makes phones, laptops, printers, or routers. U.S. export restrictions on Huawei limit access to things like advanced semiconductors and proprietary software. They don't automatically prohibit patent-licensing agreements, Reuters noted.

How we got here

This deal didn't come out of nowhere. Huawei sued HP at Europe's Unified Patent Court in August 2025, accusing HP of using a Wi-Fi 6 patent without permission, according to intellectual-property publication IAM as cited by Reuters.

HP resolved part of that fight in November 2025 by joining the Sisvel Wi-Fi 6 patent pool, an administrator based in Europe that bundles roughly 2,000 patents from about 245 patent families covering the IEEE 802.11ax standard, according to Crypto Briefing. That pool move ended legal actions against HP from both Huawei and Philips, and HP joined nearly 40 other licensees, including Cisco, Netgear, and Acer.

Wednesday's agreement is a separate, direct deal between HP and Huawei that goes beyond the pool, covering an "extended range" of Huawei's Wi-Fi patents including Wi-Fi 7, according to electronicsforyou.biz. Steven Geiszler, a Texas-based lawyer who represented Huawei in the negotiations and spent nearly a decade as one of Huawei's senior in-house IP attorneys before starting his own firm this past April, said the deal includes "valuable reciprocal patent rights from HP," per CNBC.

Huawei's licensing business keeps growing regardless of the blacklist

The blacklist hasn't stopped Huawei from cashing in on its patent portfolio. The company has reached licensing settlements with firms including Amazon, and it says it holds one of the largest shares of standard-essential patents for Wi-Fi 6.

Huawei charges 50 cents per consumer device for Wi-Fi 6 technology. By the end of 2025, more than 1.6 billion consumer electronics devices, not counting mobile phones, used Huawei's Wi-Fi-related patents, the company said. In June 2026, Huawei said it would charge the same 50-cent rate per unit for Wi-Fi 7 patents, according to Crypto Briefing.

Washington's export controls were built to choke off Huawei's access to advanced chips and software, the stuff that actually threatens national security concerns around 5G infrastructure and surveillance. Patent royalties on Wi-Fi standards are a different animal entirely, governed by international FRAND rules, fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licensing, that apply to every company using the standard, not just Huawei.

Critics of the blacklist regime could reasonably ask whether letting Huawei collect royalty checks from American companies undermines the spirit of the restrictions, even if it's legally distinct from supplying Huawei with chips. Supporters of the current framework would counter that the law was never designed to block routine patent licensing, and treating every dollar flowing to a blacklisted firm as equivalent would make basic technology standards unworkable for the entire industry.

HP, based in Palo Alto, California, remains the world's second-largest PC maker with a 21.3% market share, trailing only Lenovo, according to Gartner data cited by Reuters. HP is scheduled to report earnings Thursday, giving investors their next chance to ask company leadership directly how this licensing arrangement fits into HP's broader supply chain and legal strategy involving Chinese technology firms.

Whether Commerce Department officials view direct bilateral patent deals with Huawei, as opposed to pool-based licensing through Sisvel, as a distinction that matters for future enforcement remains to be seen. No investigation or regulatory action has been announced regarding this agreement.