Hogan Lovells’ Standard Essential Patent Update – August 2019 (English, 日本語, 한국어)

Insights and Analysis

Hogan Lovells’ Standard Essential Patent Update – August 2019 (English, 日本語, 한국어)

08 August 2019

Hogan Lovells’ Standard Essential Patent (SEP) Update reports on recent news and case decisions from jurisdictions including China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The August 2019 update can be accessed in the following languages:

English language available
日本語 (Japanese language) available
한국어 (Korean language) available

under Additional Resources in the right-hand menu.

The August 2019 update covers these developments across the globe:

Global News & Notes

Market research firm IPlytics released a May 2019 report summarizing its analysis of SEPs declared essential to the 5G standard.
Via Licensing Corporation has announced that it purchased around 100 Long Term Evolution (LTE) SEPs owned by Blackberry and that these SEPs would be added to its licensing package at no additional cost.

China Updates

According to an official announcement from the Guangdong Higher People’s Court and other reports, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd and Samsung (China) Investment Co., Ltd have agreed to a global settlement of their SEP disputes.

France Updates

In a decision dated 16 April 2019 (Docket No. 061/2019), the Paris Court of Appeal affirmed a 2015 first instance decision rejecting a patent owner’s claims that a telephone manufacturer infringed its allegedly essential patents by implementing the LTE and UMTS standards.

The Netherlands Updates

On July 2, 2019, the Court of Appeal of The Hague awarded Philips an injunction against Wiko, based on Wiko’s infringement of certain SEPs owned by Philips.

United Kingdom Updates

In its 18 July 2019 judgment in TQ Delta v. ZyXEL, the UK Court of Appeal allowed ZyXEL’s appeal and vacated the September RAND trial.
On 4 July 2019, the Patents Court handed down its decision in Conversant v Huawei [2019] EWHC 1687 (Pat), finding that, while Conversant’s SEP was essential and infringed, it was nevertheless invalid for added matter.

United States Updates

Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California found that Qualcomm’s SEP licensing practices breached U.S. antitrust law and FRAND contractual obligations, ruling in favor of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
Judge Rodney Gilstrap of the Eastern District of Texas ruled that Ericsson had offered its SEPs on FRAND terms during licensing negotiations with a major cellphone manufacturer.
On July 12, the Federal Circuit vacated a USPTO inter partes review (IPR) decision that had rejected as invalidating prior art a working draft of the High Efficiency Video Coding standard (the H.265 standard) distributed to an e-mail listserv.

For more information, please click on the Download link for the detailed newsletter in English language (日本語, 한국어 versions also available under Additional Resources in the right-hand menu) or contact partners Paul Brown, Frederick Ch’en, Zhen (Katie) Feng, Joe Raffetto, Stanislas Roux-Vaillard, Dr. Benjamin Schröer and Ruud van der Velden.

Authored by Katie Feng, Paul Brown, Ana Castedo, Giovanni Ghirardi, Hiroto Imai, Joe Raffetto, Stanislas Roux-Vaillard, Ruud van der Velden, Inmaculada Lorenzo, Liselotte Cortenraad, Julie Gemptel, James Gray, Kevin Xu, Mitsuhiro Yoshimura, Nicholas W. Rotz and Tommaso Giovanni Trabucco