In the two years since its doors opened, the UPC has quickly become one of the go-to global venues for Standards Essential Patent (SEP) litigation, with a huge number of SEP disputes pending before the pan-European court. The UPC’s broad reach, fast timetable, and willingness to grant injunctions in SEP cases, makes it an attractive choice for SEP owners.
SEPs are those patents that are necessarily infringed during compliance with technical standards agreed by cross industry standardisation bodies. Examples include the 3G, 4G and 5G telecoms standards, WiFi standards, and video coding standards. SEPs must be licenced on a Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) basis.
SEP owners immediately realised that the UPC was a valuable tool to drive resolution of licensing disputes around their SEP portfolios.
Panasonic was one of the first SEP owners to bring proceedings in the UPC, asserting a number of patents which were alleged to be essential to the 3G and 4G standards against Xiaomi and OPPO, both significant Chinese mobile handset manufacturers. This dispute resulted in the UPC’s first substantive SEP judgment, which was issued by Mannheim Local Division. The court considered that the UPC had competence to set a FRAND rate for Panasonic’s portfolio, but dismissed the request that it do so, and also dismissed OPPO’s FRAND defence, concluding that OPPO had been an unwilling licensee in the licensing negotiations. Finding the patent valid and infringed, the Mannheim Local Division granted an injunction against OPPO in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
The list of parties involved in subsequent SEP cases reads like a “Who’s Who” of global technology companies, including companies such as Lenovo, Ericsson, Nokia, Amazon, HP, Huawei, NEC, TCL, ZTE, Samsung, ASUS, MediaTek and Acer.
Many of these cases are part of a larger global dispute, with parallel SEP litigation also ongoing in countries such as the UK, Germany and the US. However, it is clear that the UPC has become a central plank in all SEP owner’s enforcement strategies.
As SEP cases continue to work their way through the UPC and further decisions issue, including at appeal level, there will inevitably be significant developments in the years to come.
