BEIJING (AFP) - Chinese telecom equipment supplier ZTE said Tuesday it was suing a unit of Swedish mobile network giant Ericsson for patent infringement, escalating a legal dispute between the two rivals.

ZTE launched legal action on Monday against Ericsson (China) Communications Co. Ltd for allegedly breaching its Chinese patents on a range of products involving "core networks, GSM infrastructure and 4G infrastructure".

"ZTE has asked that Ericsson discontinue any act of infringement and bear legal liability in accordance with the provision of relevant laws," ZTE said in a statement.

"ZTE is fully committed to developing its own patent technology and respects reasonable patent requests from other vendors."

Ericsson has filed three lawsuits in Europe against ZTE for infringing the Swedish company's patents on mobile phones and infrastructure, an Ericsson spokesman said earlier this month.

ZTE and Chinese rival Huawei have in recent years been pushing into overseas markets, eating into the market share of leading Western companies.

Ericsson, headquartered in Stockholm, has some 17,848 employees in Sweden and 90,000 worldwide.

It is the market leader in mobile network equipment ahead of Finnish-German giant Nokia Siemens, French-based telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent and China's Huawei.