ZTE Corp, China's No.2 telecommunications equipment maker, has filed a lawsuit against larger Chinese rival Huawei Technologies Co Ltd in China, it said on Friday, a day after it was sued by the latter in Europe.

ZTE is suing Huawei, the world's No.2 telecoms equipment maker, for patent infringement over its fourth-generation LTE (long term evolution) technology, it said in a statement.

ZTE will continue to use legal means to protect our intellectual property rights worldwide too ensure our legal rights are not infringed upon, ZTE said. However, we feel that patent competition shouldn't become the main means of competing in the industry.

Huawei executives were unavailable for comment.

On Thursday, Huawei said it filed lawsuits against ZTE in Germany, France and Hungary for patent and trademark infringement.

Huawei said ZTE had infringed on a series of its patents relating to data card and LTE technologies and illegally used a Huawei-registered trademark on some of its data card products.

ZTE shares were down 1.24 percent on Friday, underperforming the main Hang Seng index's 0.5 percent drop. Huawei is unlisted.

(Editing by Chris Lewis)

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