The High Court has issued an injunction against Huawei that will require the Chinese mobile phone giant to pay licence fees to escape a ban on UK smartphone sales.

In a ruling handed down last week, Huawei was ordered to pay royalties on the millions of smartphones it sells around the world to Unwired Planet, a US company that owns thousands of networking patents obtained from Ericsson.

The injunction has been put on hold as Huawei, which is the world’s third-biggest smartphone maker behind Apple and Samsung, prepares to appeal the ruling.

The ruling is highly unlikely to see Huawei handsets pulled from shelves, since the company has said it is prepared to pay royalties set out by the court. However, the existence of the injunction is a legal defeat for the company after fighting Unwired Planet for three years.

Huawei had offered to pay a licence fee to Unwired Planet after it was found to infringe on its patents in April, but Mr Justice Birss said it had made the offer too late, only after it had lost a lengthy battle in the courts.