SEP Essentials

Way back in January, I posted the letter I sent to the IEEE regarding the email sent by Andrew Woodard, a patent portfolio manager at Huawei Canada, to the 802.11 working group reflector on or around November 10, 2025 (see, Open Letter to the IEEE About the Huawei Email).  I sent the letter via email to Anand Sudhakar, Senior Counsel for the IEEE Standards Association, on January 22.  Mr. Sudhakar is the person who sent the following email (which can be found here, [802-LMSC]

Since I have been so focused of late on Huawei’s conduct in the IEEE, I noticed two recent Huawei deals.  They have been treated as unrelated, but I wonder whether they are, in fact, part and parcel of Huawei’s SEP strategy.  Hence my title: pirates on the move.  1. Nokia acquires Wi-Fi 7 related patents from Huawei .  Buried in an announcement from Nokia that was posted on December 11, 2025 ( New Wi-Fi licensing deals in automotive | Nokia ) is this statement: “In additio

This situation represents a major test for the IEEE SA processes — and ultimately whether the IEEE SA has the guts to appropriately discipline parties that violate the IEEE SA rules, potentially including Huawei as a company. It is far past time that the IEEE police itself, and the behavior of its participants. 

The IEEE is a consensus organization “dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.” [1]  And that is how Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) started: with a bunch of dreamers and idealists who wanted to create new technology to make everyone’s life easier.  They worked under a set of rules that allowed every individual who came to enough meetings to vote on proposals and required that each of these individuals vote their conscience, rather than voting in a block to protect

In Andrew Myles’ guest post ( Convergence and Competition - A Tale of Two Standards Part 4 - Guest Post by Andrew Myles ), he discussed the six companies that have failed to provide a formal response to ISO’s request to confirm whether or not they will grant a FRAND license for their Wi-Fi 6 SEPs.  It’s time to take a deeper dive into some of those six companies.  To remind you, those six companies are: ·        Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (“Huawei,” based out of China), ·