https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7272954279089328128

Huawei won and NETGEAR lost today while the latter is pursuing its U.S. antisuit (or, alternatively, interim license) push.

The Federal Patent Court of Germany held a nullity trial today (see https://lnkd.in/diaJ93pi) and upheld a WiFi 6 SEP (EP3337077 on a “wireless local area network information transmission method and apparatus") based on Huawei's first auxiliary request.

The Dusseldorf Regional Court had stayed the infringement case pending the validity outcome. If German courts believe a patent is not infringed, they typically just hand down a judgment, so in this case the court presumably found that the patent was standard-essential (not only in its granted form, but even in the form of that first auxiliary request, which was presented to the Dusseldorf court). The infringement proceedings will now have to continue, and Netgear could face a Dusseldorf injunction next year.

Huawei won a Munich injunction against AVM GmbH (which led to a settlement) late last year (see https://lnkd.in/dw-KeZHD) based on the same amended claim language that the Federal Patent Court deemed patentable today. That means this claim language has already been deemed standard-essential by a German court. The Munich (against AVM) and Dusseldorf (against Netgear) proceedings were taking place in parallel, and both were impacted by a non-binding preliminary opinion by the Federal Patent Court concerning the granted version of the claim language. That gave rise to the first auxiliary request, which was presented in both infringement proceedings. The Munich court accurately predicted that the patent was going to be upheld, while Dusseldorf didn't expect it to happen. But it did.

Next week, the Unified Patent Court's Munich Local Division will hand down a Huawei v. Netgear WiFi 6 SEP ruling (see https://lnkd.in/dHkuSbMN) and, if it is an injunction, Netgear will presumably try to accelerate the U.S. antisuit proceedings (see https://lnkd.in/d87BidJh).