As I already indicated in the previous post, after all those years I have decided to move on in various ways. It's the year of new horizons for me. This post is my final one on FOSS Patents. There is a possibility that others than me will maintain and contribute to this blog in the future. It will remain available as an archive for a transitional period. I never monetized FOSS Patents. Not a single ad was sold. Not a single subscription. It started as a private, personal thing, and that's how my involvement with it is ending now. The content wasn't monetized either. Whenever I received serious ..read more

I found out from a Light Reading article that "Ericsson has filed a number of lawsuits against Lenovo and its subsidiary Motorola Mobility for patent infringement in multiple jurisdictions." While I have subscribed to Ericsson's press release on its website, and received an earnings update two days ago, I didn't get that one. I'll try to find out more about that new cross-jurisdictional patent dispute that appears to involve SEPs as well as non-SEPs. So far I've been able to download from an electronic court docket the following complaint that was filed with the United States District Court fo ..read more

This is a quick follow-up to yesterday's report on the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court's appellate hearing in Deutsche Telekom v. IPCom. Unsurprisingly, the regional appeals court threw out the appeal. This means the Mannheim Regional Court's dismissal of the complaint stands. Deutsche Telekom can try to appeal this matter to the Federal Court of Justice. Presiding Judge Andreas Voss ("Voß" in German) mentioned yesterady that the case has the potential to reach the top court. Whether this means that his court will authorize a further appeal is another question. The reasons for the appellate de ..read more

If the decision makers in Brussels knew and understood the facts and the law, they'd realize that the proposed EU regulation on standard-essential patents (SEPs) is misguided and should be tossed (in favor of a complete do-over) regardless of whether one is more sympathetic to one camp or the other. But political dynamics are sometimes detached from reality, especially in the EU, whose economic policy track record is abysmal. That's why influential voices of reason are needed. Granted, the collective voting weight of the Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden falls far short of a blocking minority i ..read more

I just attended a two-hour appellate hearing in the German city of Karlsruhe. The Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court is the appeals court that hears all appeals from the Mannheim Regional Court. In this case, the June 2022 decision to throw out Deutsche Telekom's long-shot antitrust lawsuit against standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing firm IPCom. Given what's at stake, I was surprised to be the only independent person in the audience. Besides the three-judge panel of the Sixth Civil Senate (Presiding Judge Andreas Voss ("Voß" in German), Judge (and rapporteur) Professor Gloeckner ("Glöckner ..read more

Unlike those who engage in lobbying, I don't have to mince words when commenting on what's going on in the EU with respect to the proposed regulation on standard-essential patents (SEPs). Among other things, I've said on LinkedIn that the EU SEP Reg does reinforce my belief that the EU--an economic policy failure, plain and simple--is on the wrong track in many ways. I'm currently moving to a far better-run country that is not an EU member and most likely won't join in my lifetime. The European Commission's Directorate-General for the Internal Market (DG GROW) has already embarrassed itself wi ..read more

Finally, the proposed EU regulation on standard-essential patents (SEPs) has been formally criticized--in the form of a draft committee report--within the European Parliament (EP). Not just from within the EP, but also from within the EPP: that's one more P and stands for European People's Party. The EPP is the largest group in the EP, though with 25% of the votes it's not as powerful anymore as it used to be at its peak where it needed only one other (and reasonably large) political group to form a majority (reasonably consistent voting along party lines provided). There are many rapporteurs ..read more

Bring the popcorn. The seemingly neverending, multijurisdictional patent dispute between Nokia and OPPO continues to make news. Earlier this week, I reported on a decision by the European Patent Office (EPO) to uphold an OPPO patent in an amended form, and now let'see how the modified claim language will fare at a Mannheim infringement trial in early December and/or in a preliminary injunction proceeding before the Unified Patent Court (UPC). Now there's news from the U.S., a jurisdiction in which the parties don't have any infringement actions pending against each other, but where the Patent ..read more

Patent pool administrator Sisvel just announced that Huawei, one of the largest patent holders in this space, has joined the narrowband Internet of Things (IoT) patent pool that was launched last November. The largest founding licensor was Ericsson. This is the second Sisvel pool for Huawei to join. More than a year ago, Huawei started its working relationship with Sisvel as an initial licensor of its WiFi 6 pool (as Sisvel president Mattia Fogliacco recalls in today's press release) and is also an Avanci 5G licensor, which shows that the Chinese innovator is increasingly receptive to poo ..read more

Nokia and OPPO are giving each other a hard time in different patent validity fora. Recently, even some Nokia patents that gave rise to German injunctions have been deemed invalid in other--but definitely reputable--jurisdictions. It's a monumental, earth-spanning dispute. There hasn't been anything so large and long-running in the wireless sector for years. The latest development involves OPPO's EP3624524 on "wireless communication methods, network device, and terminal device." It's a 5G declared-essential patent that OPPO asserted against Nokia in Mannheim, with a trial scheduled for Decembe ..read more