Chinese telecom giant Huawei's patent lawsuits against US carrier Verizon are a sign of a healthy system of innovation, said experts.

Huawei filed two patent-infringement lawsuits against Verizon in the federal court in Texas late last week, demanding Verizon pay $1 billion to license the rights to patented technology.

Patent licensing is common in high-tech industries. Telecom companies like Qualcomm and Nokia earn significant revenue from their massive patent portfolios. Huawei, for example, holds more than 87,000 patents globally, with 11,000 of those in the United States.

Huawei has not been an aggressive enforcer of its patents, but the lawsuit is "not unexpected", said Mark Cohen, a senior fellow and director of the Asia IP Project at the University of California's Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

"Huawei wants to commercialize its technology, including its standards and essential technology," Cohen said. "So, as it gets excluded from certain important markets, such as the United States, it may look to commercialize that technology in other ways, such as by lawsuits."

Cohen said he imagines that Verizon may be entitled to indemnities from some of its suppliers against third-party infringement suits, like the one from Huawei.

If that is the case, he said, the patent battle may really be between Huawei and other competitive suppliers, such as Ericsson and Nokia.