Posts Tagged: "ZTE"

In a ruling concerning patent portfolios owned by Unwired Planet and Conversant, the UK Supreme Court has upheld lower decisions that English courts can determine fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms for worldwide patent licenses, and grant injunctions. The Court’s unanimous judgment in the three cases (Unwired Planet International Ltd and another v Huawei Technologies (UK) Co Ltd and another, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and another v Conversant Wireless Licensing SÀRL and ZTE Corporation and another v Conversant Wireless Licensing SÀRL [2020] UKSC 37) was issued today (August 26), after the Court heard arguments in October 2019.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Federal Circuit strikes down a district court’s finding of design patent infringement on summary judgment; the USPTO advises trademark attorneys to monitor filings to prevent against the unauthorized use of their names; the U.S. Copyright Office issues final rules eliminating options for physical material submissions for newspaper and serial registrations; the U.S. Supreme Court will take up Booking.com’s appeal of the rejection of its trademark application by the USPTO; AG Barr supports the FCC’s plan to restrict Huawei and ZTE equipment purchases through the Universal Service Fund; Nirvana’s copyright case against Marc Jacobs moves past a motion to dismiss; Biogen loses $3 billion in market value after PTAB hearing; and Amazon seeks an injunction against a patent owner asserting infringement claims against Amazon Fire product retailers.

Standards-declared patents have been challenged in ex parte and post-grant review for years as part of enforcement efforts and other strategies, though the volume of patents declared essential and their largely unlitigated status has limited the appeal of post-grant challenges against them.  One such standard, High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), promises to be the successor to the current H.264 standard used by most streaming visual media.  As all parties seek to clear risk and license as they implement, developing patent pools have been utilizing new strategies for licensing standard-declared patents. Recently, Unified Patents launched an HEVC zone aimed at encouraging adoption and shedding light on the standard-essential patent (SEP) landscape, and has conducted damages studies, landscape models, and analysis of the patent landscape around the HEVC standard. As part of those efforts, Unified has been challenging patents related to the standard. To date, only a handful of litigations have been filed related to HEVC patents. 

Last week, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued 39 decisions regarding petitions for inter partes review (IPR) patent validity proceedings, instituting 26. Eight of those proceedings involve major tech firms Samsung, ZTE, Huawei and LG Electronics, all of which won on motions to join previous Google IPRs filed to challenge a pair of Cywee Group patents. Qualcomm also faces a trio of IPRs brought by Intel to challenge the validity of a patent involved in the now-settled legal battle with Apple.

5G, or 5th generation wireless communication, has reached the point of determining which core technologies will be used. Suddenly, decisions about which companies will be picked are upon us. And the stakes could hardly be higher — for the companies and for our national (and American citizens’) security. The two businesses in the ring, Qualcomm and Huawei, each find themselves in a tough fight to dominate the IP-based 5G technology on which countless devices—from automobiles to mobile phones to who-knows-what—will interoperate. The 5G platform will empower the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence writ large and more—a technological advance with tremendous potential as well as tremendous risk exposure to spies, hackers and such. Both companies face hurdles from the U.S. government. One makes sense. The other makes no sense.

In the U.S., the risks of frivolous patent lawsuits is greater because the merits are decided by a group of jurors who lack patent expertise and can incorrectly conclude that a patent is infringed. In China, however, these inefficiencies and imbalances do not exist. The specialized intellectual property courts and tribunals in China are equipped with specialized judges who are able to quickly and accurately identify frivolous lawsuits. Because there is no discovery process and a decision on the merits can often be achieved within one year, the abusive tactics employed by patent trolls in the U.S. can be avoided in China.

Several weeks ago, the House Small Business Committee held a hearing titled ZTE: A Threat to America’s Small Businesses to explore the economic and national security threats posed by the Chinese telecommunications equipment and systems firm ZTE. The day’s discussion focused on ways that American small businesses could protect themselves from ZTE specifically and Chinese-backed entities more generally as well as the mixed signals being sent by the administration of President Donald Trump regarding ZTE.

The day’s hearing featured discussion of actions the U.S. government should be taking in order to counter deceptive trade practices pursued by the Chinese government, a topic which has become a main theme of the administration of President Donald Trump… Despite initiatives like the Made in China 2025 program, there’s no way for the Chinese economy to get close to catching up to the United States’ competitive advantage in many industries over the next 20 to 30 years without cheating by stealing innovation according to panel witness Robert Atkinson, President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Atkinson argued in his opening statement for a stronger antitrust regime to go after specific Chinese firms, such as rules prohibiting Chinese firms that have stolen U.S. IP from using our nation’s banking and financial systems.

“Increasing numbers of US operating companies dislike patent protection,” Ding explained to IAM. “[T]he production and manufacture of products are increasingly located in Asia and Asian companies have more and more patents… opportunities are being transferred to the East just like manufacturing was.” * * * Although strong patent licensing activities are surely welcome news to Huawei and the many people employed by that firm, stakeholders in the U.S. patent system likely can’t help but see this as a further harbinger that China’s innovation economy will overtake ours in the coming years.

Patent system savvy corporations are ganging up on a smaller developer within the nascent automotive software industry who had the temerity to assert a patent covering a technology it developed in-house… The IPR challenges the validity of a patent owned by InfoGation Corporation, Inc., of San Diego, CA, a designer and developer of navigation software for the automotive industry, which was founded in 1996… The filing of the Google IPR is a direct consequence of Infogation filing suit against HTC, ZTE and Huawei last July, each of which alleged infringement of the ‘743 patent.

In the world of smartphones, it’s looking like paranoia is becoming much more profitable in recent years. Huge security breaches at major corporations around the world have made people everywhere much more aware of the technological risks they run in their own daily lives. We’ve already reported on the value of patent portfolios focused on mobile device security here on…

This InterDigital complaint arises under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. § 1337). Pursuant to Section 337, the ITC conducts investigations into allegations of unfair practices relating to importation and trade. Section 337 declares the infringement of certain statutory intellectual property rights and other forms of unfair competition to be unlawful practices. Section 337 investigations conducted by the U.S. International Trade Commission most often involve claims regarding intellectual property rights, including allegations of patent infringement and trademark infringement by imported goods. In this case, the InterDigital complaint asserts the defendants are infringing U.S. Patent Nos. 7,349,540, 7,502,406, 7,536,013, 7,616,970, 7,706,332, 7,706,830, and 7,970,127.