According to a report by PCMag, U.S. network equipment manufacturer Netgear filed a 49-page countersuit in court on June 11, suing competitor TP-Link for tens of millions of dollars. Netgear accuses TP-Link of misleading consumers through false advertising, making them believe that TP-Link has completely severed its ties with Chinese companies, which resulted in significant lost sales revenue for Netgear in the U.S. residential router market. Netgear cites TP-Link’s own 2024 sustainability report, pointing out that its R&D and manufacturing operations still heavily rely on Chinese subsidiaries. While some production capacity was moved to a factory in Vietnam in 2024, core production activities remain in China. Netgear is asking the court to issue an injunction prohibiting TP-Link from claiming to be “a U.S. company that only sources and manufactures products from Vietnam.” However, the countersuit does not provide specific sales loss figures.
The countersuit stems from TP-Link’s initial lawsuit against Netgear in November 2024, in which TP-Link accused Netgear of deliberately portraying it as a threat to U.S. national security. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) subsequently imposed restrictions on foreign-made Wi-Fi routers, granting temporary exemptions to some companies including Netgear. TP-Link denied the allegations in Netgear’s countersuit, calling them “substantially false and distorted,” and said it would seek to restore the truth through legal channels. A statement on its U.S. website says that TP-Link Systems Inc., headquartered in Irvine, Calif., completely separated from TP-Link Technologies Co., Ltd., which serves the mainland China market, in October 2024 in terms of ownership, management, and operational model, and does not sell products to customers in mainland China. According to data from Dell’Oro Group, TP-Link’s actual market share in the North American residential Wi-Fi router market in 2024 was less than 10% when routers provided by ISPs are included.