Tech giant Apple Inc. may need to pay Chinese smartphone maker Huawei over a patent licensing issue in 2015, according to a report released by the State Intellectual Property Office of China and estimates from Tencent Technology.

Huawei allegedly licensed 769 patents to Apple, but the California-based firm only offered 98 patent payments to Huawei last year.

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According to China Radio International, both companies arrived at a series of deals in 2015, including patents for GSM, LTE, UMTS, and other communication technologies.

Although Apple has a core team of designers, it is still obliged to pay patent fees to its rivals.

According to Xinhua, Huawei invested a lot into research and development last year. It spent about 15 percent of its total sales revenue at $9.2 billion in that area, while Apple only allocated 3.5 percent at $8.5 billion to research and development.

Huawei has refused to give specific details about the issue, explaining it signed a confidentiality agreement with the American multinational technology firm.

However, Huawei said that it has always complied with international intellectual property rules when dealing with intellectual property issues such as cross patent licensing and business cooperation.

The Shenzhen-based company reigned in filing international patents in 2015, based on the statistics by the World Intellectual Property Organization. Moreover, it climbed to the fourth place across Europe, the European Patent Organization revealed.

Huawei was also named the world's biggest telecommunications equipment maker, surpassing Ericsson.

Huawei has more than 52,550 patents locally, and 30,924 internationally - 5,052 are in the United States, while 11,474 are in Europe, according to China Money Network.

TagsHuawei, apple, Patent, patent license, Smartphone