Japan's NTT DoCoMo announced it has granted a standards-essential patent license for its wireless technologies to equipment vendor Huawei.
The operator has now granted patent licenses to more than 10 companies and plans to pursue more such licensing deals in the future.
As a result of its extensive R&D efforts over the past two decades, DoCoMo currently holds more than 5,300 standards-essential patents for W-CDMA, LTE and LTE-A technologies, the company said.
The company licenses its patents both as part of patent pools lumping together interrelated standards-essential patents from multiple vendors, and through direct deals with individual licensees.
Financial terms of the licensing deal have not been disclosed. DoCoMo said it plans to build up 5G intellectual property as it continues to contribute to the development of the standard, and will continue to pursue licensing deals for its patents via patent pools and individual negotiations.