On May 1, 2026, the Chongqing First Intermediate People’s Court issued a landmark first-instance judgment in the global SEP dispute between ZTE and Samsung Electronics, ordering Samsung to pay $731 million under a six-year global 2G-5G Standard Essential Patent (SEP) cross-license agreement.
The dispute arose from unsuccessful renewal negotiations following the expiration of the parties’ prior cellular SEP cross-licensing framework. After reaching an impasse regarding the valuation of their respective patent portfolios, ZTE and Samsung initiated parallel litigation proceedings across multiple jurisdictions, including Brazil, China, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Econic Partners played a central role in the Chinese proceedings with Dr. Kun Huang serving as ZTE’s testifying economic expert, providing critical economic and quantitative analysis supporting the determination of a global royalty rate consistent with fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) principles. The court relied extensively on Dr. Huang’s expert analyses, including adoption of his hedonic regression framework to determine the 5G Aggregate Royalty Burden under a top-down approach, as well as his economic unpacking analysis of comparable license agreements. The ruling represents a significant development in global SEP rate-setting litigation and highlights the increasing importance of rigorous economic analysis in complex cross-border intellectual property disputes.
Dr. Huang was supported by an Econic team, including Jake Cheng, Nicholas Liu, Zihao Zeng, and Danhua Zhang. The team worked closely with ZTE’s in-house counsel, and external legal counsel at King & Wood.
