Global licence can be FRAND, English Court of Appeal confirms
23-10-2018
FRAND case against Huawei and ZTE to proceed in UK
20-04-2018
lazyllama / Shutterstock.com
The UK Supreme Court’s judgment in Unwired Planet will have huge ramifications for SEP licensing. Yohan Liyanage of Linklaters unpacks the decision and explains what it will mean for patent owners and implementers alike.
It is commonplace for court decisions to be described as “long-awaited” and “landmark judgments”, but such epithets are undoubtedly appropriate to describe the August 2020 decision of the UK Supreme Court in the cases of Unwired Planet v Huawei and Conversant v Huawei and ZTE.
The judgment is the culmination of proceedings lasting six years in the Unwired Planet case, and confirmation that English courts are entitled to set the terms of a global licence of standard-essential patents (SEPs) on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. This is set to have significant impact on the resolution of telecommunications patent disputes worldwide.
Background
The rest of this article is locked for subscribers only. Please login to continue reading.
If you don't have a login, you will need to purchase a subscription to gain access to this article, including all our online content. Please use this link and follow the steps.
To request a FREE 2-week trial subscription, use the same link but select the 'trial' option in the dropdown box. NOTE - this can take up to 48hrs to be approved.
For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription to us that we can add you to for FREE, please email Atif Choudhury at achoudhury@worldipreview.com
FRAND, UK Supreme Court, Unwired Planet, SEP licensing, patent owners, landmark judgement, ETSI, SSO, Huawei, Ericsson, Samsung, Google, foreign rights
