The US Department of Justice is looking into the claim, potentially adding to existing criminal cases against Huawei, the WSJ reported last week.
Huawei -- considered the world leader in superfast 5G equipment and the world's number two
smartphone producer -- was in May swept into a deepening trade war between
Beijing and
Washington, which has seen punitive
tariffs slapped on hundreds of billions of dollars of two-way trade.
The latest controversy involves Portuguese inventor Rui Pedro Oliveira who claims Huawei met him and then essentially ripped off one of his designs in order to produce the Huawei EnVizion 360 panoramic camera.