A Portuguese entrepreneur claims that Chinese tech giant Huawei stole his 360-degree smartphone-attachable camera invention after he pitched the patent-pending product to the company for licensing five years ago.
The offending product, according to Rui Pedro Oliveira, CEO of multimedia company Imaginew, is Huawei’s smartphone-attachable camera called EnVizion 360 Camera, announced in 2017.
The 45-year-old entrepreneur from Porto said that during the past year, he had been negotiating with Huawei’s U.S. lawyers to resolve the dispute and believed that they were approaching a settlement—only to find that the company had sued him at a Texas court on March 25.
The lawsuit, filed by Huawei’s U.S. subsidiaries, Huawei Technologies USA Inc. and Huawei Device USA Inc., seeks a declaration that the companies didn’t infringe upon Oliveira’s patent.
The inventor’s claims add to a growing pile of accusations against Huawei, from allegations of technology theft to governments warning of security risks that its products could be used by Beijing for spying.
At the same time, many countries are finalizing their decisions on whether to include the company’s technology in their emerging 5G networks. The United States, Australia, New Zealand, and several mobile operators in Europe and Asia have already shut out Huawei from their 5G plans.
Meeting
In an extensive interview with The Epoch Times, Oliveira explained how he visited the United States in 2014 to pitch his camera to various technology companies in hopes that they would license, manufacture, and sell his invention.
With the help of a U.S. businessman who set up the meetings, Oliveira secured a meeting with Huawei on May 28, 2014. The two were invited to discuss the licensing opportunity at Huawei’s U.S. headquarters in Plano, Texas.
At the time, Oliveira’s invention, a 360-degree camera attachable to smartphones called SmatCam, was patent pending with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The two patents relating to the camera have since been approved.
Prior to the meeting, Oliveira entered into a non-disclosure agreement with one of Huawei’s representatives, a copy of which The Epoch Times has obtained.
Oliveira said he met with four representatives from the company’s business and sales divisions, and gave a presentation, which included the results of focus group tests that surveyed how people reacted to the product, priced at $99.95.
During the meeting, he also presented a 3D model of his invention and showed them the design drawings attached to his patent applications.
The entrepreneur said the Huawei representatives expressed interest and asked him to return the next day to give the same presentation to some technicians. This, Oliveira said, seemed to be a good sign, as most other companies he pitched to didn’t ask for a second meeting.
After the second meeting, Oliveira was told that the company would consider his offer and get back to him soon.
The entrepreneur never heard back from Huawei.
Dealings With Huawei
Oliveira didn’t think back to those meetings for three years, until one day, a friend who knew about his invention messaged him, telling him to check out a website link to Huawei’s new smartphone-attachable camera, the EnVizion 360 Camera.
“I thought it was crazy. How could they dare to do something so … similar?” Oliveira said.
The camera was sold at $99.95, the same price suggested during Oliveira’s presentation.
He immediately emailed the Huawei representatives he met with in 2014, as he had kept their business cards, alleging that Huawei’s EnVizion Camera violated his intellectual property. He was eventually referred to the company’s U.S. legal department.
Through his Portuguese lawyer, Oliveira said he started communicating with two of Huawei’s U.S. attorneys from about April 2018, after he sent a letter to Huawei charging that the company had infringed upon his patents and seeking compensation.
After a few months of back and forth communication, Huawei’s lawyers told him they couldn’t proceed with discussions until Oliveira hired a U.S. attorney.
