File photo shows mobile phones produced by Huawei and Apple. [Photo: huanqiu.com]

It's been revealed that Apple has started paying patent fees to the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

According to a report from the Guangdong Intellectual Property Office, Huawei licensed 769 patents to Apple in 2015, while the American company offered Huawei 98 patents in return.

The report says the two companies reached a series of agreements last year, including patents relating to GSM, UMTS, LTE and other wireless communication technologies.

Although having a team of outstanding designers, the American multinational technology company Apple still has to pay patent fees to its competitors.

When asked for further details, Huawei said it was unable to do so, due to a confidentiality agreement that it had signed with Apple.

The company added that it always abided by the rules of international intellectual property, and solved intellectual property problems in a number of ways, including through cross patent licensing and business cooperation.

Based in Shenzhen, Huawei is the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, having overtaken Ericsson in 2012.

According to the statistics released by World Intellectual Property Organization, Huawei topped the table again in terms of international patent applications in 2015. It also jumped to fourth place in Europe, according to the annual report released by European Patent Organization.

The Chinese tech giant also applies for the protection of its intellectual property rights outside China.

By the end of 2015, Huawei had obtained 52,550 patents in China, 30,613 in foreign countries, and has been authorized 50,377 patents in total.