Recently, Philips has had little luck in the Europe-wide dispute over mobile phone patents in Germany. In infringement proceedings, Philips was unable to obtain an injunction against Wiko. A little earlier, the Federal Patent Court had also destroyed a Dutch implementation patent.
6 November 2019 by Konstanze Richter
The subject of the most recent infringement dispute between Philips and Wiko at the Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe was European patent EP 1 815 647, which protects a method for priority-based queuing and assembling of packets in mobile communication. The rights had been maintained by the Federal Patent Court in June (case ID: 5 Ni 38/16), but remained an SEP.
The judges in Karlsruhe recognised a violation of the slightly restricted version of the SEP by Wiko’s German subsidiary. They therefore sentenced the defendant to information and accounting.
However, the court rejected the claim of the plaintiff Philips for injunctive relief (case ID: 6 U 183/16). The judges thus agreed with Wiko’s objection that the Dutch licence offer was not FRAND-compliant.
Volkmar Henke
Philips argued that it had given French parent company Wiko SAS sufficient time to enter into a licence agreement before filing the complaint in October 2015. However, the French company countered that the offer did not comply with the FRAND rules. In addition, it had shown to be willing to licence during the ongoing trial.
Andreas Kramer
The Regional Court in Mannheim rejected this in the first instance. According to the judges, the request for a licence should have been made before the action was brought.
The appeal court has now deviated from this judgment. According to the Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe, the willingness to licence also applies after the infringement action has been filed.
On the other hand, the Karlsruhe judges also rejected a claim for submission of the licence agreements with other licensees. This was demanded by the defendant Wiko.
Parties have been given leave to appeal.
The Karlsruhe ruling is part of a Europe-wide series of cases that Philips is conducting against various mobile phone manufacturers in the Netherlands, France and UK, as well as other countries. In addition to Wiko, a number of other parties including Archos, Asus, HTC and Axdia are suing for violations of various SEPs relating to UMTS and LTE technology.
At the same time, the parties are fighting over non-essential implementation patents. Since the patents often concern functions such as apps on mobile phones, Google, as supplier of the Android operating system, is also involved in some cases.
The US company has recently been successful in a nullity case. The German Federal Patent Court destroyed EP 1 415 218 at the end of October. This protects a technology for speech recognition and control, and is used in applications such as Siri. An appeal against the nullity judgment is possible.
Marcus Grosch
In the parallel infringement proceedings, the Regional Court Mannheim had already dismissed the claims against Archos, Asus and Axdia in 2018 (case IDs: 7 O 103/17, 7 O 104/17 and 7 O 105/17). The appeal proceedings are pending before the Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe (case IDs: 6 U 62/18, 6 U 63/18 and 6 U 64/18).
In the meantime, the proceedings in Mannheim against Asustek (case ID: 7 O 18/18) as well as HTC and Google (case ID: 2 O 100/17) and Wiko (case ID: 2 O 99/17) are suspended.
As with all previous trials in Germany, Philips has relied on its regular law firm Eisenführ Speiser, with attorneys Henke and Ehlers regularly working for the group. Hoyng ROKH Monegier represents the electronics group in France and the Netherlands.
Wiko has also relied on Düsseldorf-based Vossius partner Andreas Kramer for some time now. Kramer brought the case from his previous position at Arnold Ruess in 2018. However, Munich patent litigators and patent attorneys are also working for Wiko. In the parallel proceedings, the French mobile phone manufacturer has relied on Armengaud Guerlain in France and Brinkhof in the Netherlands.
Quinn Emanuel is first choice for Google and subsidiaries in Germany. The two have a long-standing and close relationship. The in-house counsel responsible for patent litigation since August 2015 was previously an associate at Quinn Emanuel.
For Philips
Eisenführ Speiser (Hamburg): Volkmar Henke, Jochen Ehlers (lead); Désirée Heintz (patent attorney); associate: Sönke Scheltz
For Wiko
Vossius & Partner (Düsseldorf): Andreas Kramer (lead); associate: Leonie Dißmann-Fuchs;
Raffay & Fleck (Hamburg): Jan Wienhausen
For Google
In-house (Munich): Ralf Uhrich
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan (Munich, Mannheim): Marcus Grosch (lead), Jérôme Kommer, Katrin Gerstenberg
Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe, 6th Civil Chamber
Andreas Voß (presiding judge), Stefan Singer, Leonhard Schmidt
German Federal Patent Court, 7th Senate
Joachim Rauch (presiding judge)
Locked in a major battle across Europe with Archos, Asus, HTC and Wiko, electronics giant Philips has recently had mixed success. ...
9 August 2019 by Mathieu KlosA series of lawsuits being conducted by Philips against various mobile phone manufacturers is one of the largest in Europe. Now t ...
3 April 2019 by Mathieu KlosAfter losing a patent in Germany, things have been better for Philips in its home jurisdiction. This week the Dutch tech giant en ...
15 May 2019 by Mathieu Klos...
byWe use cookies on our website. Some of them are essential, while others help us to improve this website and your experience.
Here you will find an overview of all cookies used. You can give your consent to whole categories or display further information and select certain cookies.
Essential cookies enable basic functions and are necessary for the proper function of the website.
Name | |
---|---|
Provider | Owner of this website |
Purpose | Saves the visitors preferences selected in the Cookie Box of Borlabs Cookie. |
Cookie Name | borlabs-cookie |
Cookie Expiry | 1 Year |
Name | |
---|---|
Provider | Google LLC |
Purpose | Cookie by Google used to control advanced script and event handling. |
Privacy Policy | https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en |
Cookie Name | _ga,_gat,_gid |
Cookie Expiry | 1 Year |
Statistics cookies collect information anonymously. This information helps us to understand how our visitors use our website.
Accept | |
---|---|
Name | |
Provider | Google LLC |
Purpose | Cookie by Google used for website analytics. Generates statistical data on how the visitor uses the website. |
Privacy Policy | https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en |
Cookie Name | _ga,_gat,_gid |
Cookie Expiry | 1 Year |
Marketing cookies are used by third-party advertisers or publishers to display personalized ads. They do this by tracking visitors across websites.
Accept | |
---|---|
Name | |
Provider | Hotjar Ltd. |
Purpose | Hotjar is an user behavior analytic tool by Hotjar Ltd.. We use Hotjar to understand how users interact with our website. |
Privacy Policy | https://www.hotjar.com/legal/policies/privacy/ |
Host(s) | *.hotjar.com |
Cookie Name | _hjClosedSurveyInvites, _hjDonePolls, _hjMinimizedPolls, _hjDoneTestersWidgets, _hjIncludedInSample, _hjShownFeedbackMessage, _hjid, _hjRecordingLastActivity, hjTLDTest, _hjUserAttributesHash, _hjCachedUserAttributes, _hjLocalStorageTest, _hjptid |
Cookie Expiry | Session / 1 Year |
Content from video platforms and social media platforms is blocked by default. If External Media cookies are accepted, access to those contents no longer requires manual consent.
Accept | |
---|---|
Name | |
Provider | |
Purpose | Used to unblock Facebook content. |
Privacy Policy | https://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation |
Host(s) | .facebook.com |
Accept | |
---|---|
Name | |
Provider | |
Purpose | Used to unblock Google Maps content. |
Privacy Policy | https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en&gl=en |
Host(s) | .google.com |
Cookie Name | NID |
Cookie Expiry | 6 Month |
Accept | |
---|---|
Name | |
Provider | |
Purpose | Used to unblock Instagram content. |
Privacy Policy | https://www.instagram.com/legal/privacy/ |
Host(s) | .instagram.com |
Cookie Name | pigeon_state |
Cookie Expiry | Session |
Accept | |
---|---|
Name | |
Provider | OpenStreetMap Foundation |
Purpose | Used to unblock OpenStreetMap content. |
Privacy Policy | https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy |
Host(s) | .openstreetmap.org |
Cookie Name | _osm_location, _osm_session, _osm_totp_token, _osm_welcome, _pk_id., _pk_ref., _pk_ses., qos_token |
Cookie Expiry | 1-10 Years |
Accept | |
---|---|
Name | |
Provider | |
Purpose | Used to unblock Twitter content. |
Privacy Policy | https://twitter.com/privacy |
Host(s) | .twimg.com, .twitter.com |
Cookie Name | __widgetsettings, local_storage_support_test |
Cookie Expiry | Unlimited |
Accept | |
---|---|
Name | |
Provider | Vimeo |
Purpose | Used to unblock Vimeo content. |
Privacy Policy | https://vimeo.com/privacy |
Host(s) | player.vimeo.com |
Cookie Name | vuid |
Cookie Expiry | 2 Years |
Accept | |
---|---|
Name | |
Provider | YouTube |
Purpose | Used to unblock YouTube content. |
Privacy Policy | https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en&gl=en |
Host(s) | google.com |
Cookie Name | NID |
Cookie Expiry | 6 Month |