UK judges can set global royalty rates for the use of telecommunications technology, Britain’s highest court said on Wednesday in a pair of cases over how much Huawei Technologies Co (華為) owes US patent owners.
The UK Supreme Court affirmed a decision that Huawei would either have to pay Unwired Planet International Ltd a global rate set by judges or face an order limiting its British sales.
In a related decision involving another patent owner, the court rejected Huawei and ZTE Corp’s (中興) argument that if any court were to establish a global rate, it should be in China, where manufacturing and the bulk of sales are.
Photo: Bloomberg
While Huawei said that it has since settled with Unwired Planet’s parent company, the ruling could effectively make British courts a one-stop shop to set global royalty rates. It also could set off a competition should other countries, such as China, Germany and the US, decide they want to be the arbiter of these disputes.
Since the original ruling, UK tribunals have already become more popular with patent owners.
Companies worldwide are fighting over who profits from fundamental technology in wireless communications. The cases have pitted the owners of patents on standardized technology, including Qualcomm Inc and Ericsson AB, against those who use the systems in their products, including Apple Inc.
Regulators and courts around the world have grappled with how to value patents for essential technology and whether their owners have any rights to limit the use of the inventions.
It is a thorny issue that is becoming more important as the world transitions to the next generation of wireless technology known as 5G.
The unclear rules have frustrated automakers and other manufacturers of Internet of Things devices.
Patent owners want to get compensation for their research, while manufacturers want to reduce their costs.
The “decision makes the UK one of the leading global jurisdictions for the resolution of such disputes,” said EIP, one of the law firms representing the patent holders.
In a statement, Huawei said it “continues to advocate a balanced position” when it comes to licensing of standard-essential patents, calling it “critical to the innovation that brings enormous benefits to our industry and society.”
The “overall feeling” on both sides is that the UK courts are more likely to rule in favor of owners of patents on essential technology, said Dafydd Bevan, head of the high tech group at Marks & Clerk Law.
Companies might opt to limit British sales to avoid the court, he said.
It “could reshape technology licensing deals in the 5G era,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Tamlin Bason said.
It “may embolden patent owners like Qualcomm, Nokia and Ericsson, while undermining leverage for Apple and other device makers,” Bason said.
Legal experts debate whether this would mean more or less litigation.
It could set both sides “racing to the foreign courts that they consider will set the most favorable license terms,” said Steve Baldwin, an intellectual property lawyer with Kirkland & Ellis.
The ruling also set out steps judges could take to determine an appropriate global rate.
The decision assumes that not all patents in a portfolio are valid or essential to an industry standard as the potential licensees will try to knock out as many patents as they can.
Still, setting one global rate is consistent with how companies decide their own disputes when litigation is not involved, the court said.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
RSS