Two SEP alerts: Munich trial on Thursday; misinformation about Nokia enforcement against Daimler and OPPO

1) Next German SEP trial in two days

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7185938083199041536

The next standard-essential patent (SEP) trial in Germany will take place on Thursday (April 18): InterDigital, Inc. v. Lenovo. The Munich I Regional Court's press office has provided the following data points:

- case no. 7 O 12029/23

- patent-in-suit: EP2127420

- trial starts at 9 AM local time

I won't be there as I attend the IP Dealmakers Forum in London. But if you are in Munich or can be in Munich that day, you may find that one interesting. The Munich court is undoubtedly aware of the fact that the European Commission disagrees (to an extent that is unspecified as of now) with its SEP case law. In fact, the decision the EC would like to see overturned on appeal was made by that very division of the court: its Seventh Civil Chamber (under its former presiding judge).

If not for the settlement that ip fray found out about yesterday, Huawei v. AVM GmbH would have been the next German SEP trial. That one was scheduled for tomorrow (April 17).

2) Misinformation about Nokia's enforcement against Daimler and OPPO

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7185894210837864449/?actorCompanyId=92947396

There's some pro-SEP-Regulation advocacy (link) that contains multiple demonstrably false claims about Nokia v. Daimler and Nokia v. OPPO (not quite consistent with the name of the author's consultancy firm, "Veracity"):

"An example of where the threat of exclusion skewed the licensing negotiation is the cases of Nokia vs. Oppo and Nokia vs. Daimler. Here, Nokia pursued injunctions across various jurisdictions before the European Patent Office (EPO) Board of Appeals declared the Nokia patents invalid. Daimler had settled with Nokia on onerous terms based on the same contested patents before the finding of invalidity."

1. The overlap between the Nokia-Daimler (August 2020) and Nokia-OPPO (June 2022) injunctions was EP2981103 (alongside a second one from the same family, EP3220562). In March 2018, the EPO gave notice of the end of the opposition period for EP'103, a year before Nokia sued Daimler. Neither Daimler nor anyone else challenged EP'103 during the EPO's opposition period, thus there was no way the EPO Boards of Appeal ever dealt with that patent. For EP'562, Daimler's opposition was rejected and no appeal was lodged.

2. Nokia's EP'103 injunction was not practically enforceable because of a requirement (adjusted by the appeals court, the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court) to provide collateral to the tune of about 7 billion euros. When Daimler settled with Nokia, the injunction was not being enforced, but -- and this again contradicts those false claims -- a positive assessment of the patent's validity by the Federal Patent Court of Germany led the appeals court to consider putting the appeal on the fast track so as to enable Nokia to enforce the patent (after an appellate win) without collateral. That was presumably one of the reasons, apart from elevated legal fees that were not commensurate with results, for Daimler to settle.

3. Nokia asserted EP'103 and EP'562 against OPPO in some other jurisdictions. Notably, the High Court of Justice in London decided that matter for Nokia. OPPO prevailed on its invalidity defense in the Stockholm-based Patents & Markets Court. That was an interesting outcome (Nokia would presumably call it an outlier), but it wasn't a Europe-wide invalidation decision.

4. The EPO's BoA invalidated Nokia's EP2087626, but no injunction had come down over that one.

That said, OPPO's exclusion from the German market was very unfortunate and they will hopefully return to that market in the not too distant future.