Aren't we giving this article more attention then it warrants? I hate to be the cold water, wet blanket here, but isn't it entirely possible that because ZTE is a Chinese company and we are in the authors mind because of a settlement/arbitration with Huawei and the agreement to play nice with the Chinese licensing regulation department that he mistakenly included zte in the press release.
Seems to me this would get a lot more attention and like you said a required press release from idcc announcing this since the only reason to take them out of the complaint is because there is some sort of agreement between the 2 companies similar to what is going on with Huawei.
Just seems to me to an innocuous mention that we may have a bit of wishful thinking.