Lenovo gets access to InterDigital licensing info ahead of FRAND trial
The English High Court has handed down another judgment in the ongoing high-profile standard-essential patent (SEP) litigation between InterDigital and Lenovo, clarifying certain confidentiality matters ahead of the next scheduled trial in January.
The two tech giants are in dispute over five patents covering both 3G and 4G standards owned by InterDigital.
In a ruling handed down in August, InterDigital emerged victorious, with the UK Patents Court handing down a verdict finding that one of the key patents was valid, infringed, and essential to the 4G standard.
A second trial is scheduled for January 2022 to examine whether the licence offer made by InterDigital was fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND).
Ahead of the FRAND trial, Justice Mellor handed down a judgment on Friday, November 26 addressing arguments around the confidentiality of certain patent licence agreements.
Mellor said: “These confidentiality issues matter to the parties but also to the counterparties to the various agreements. For this reason, I did not give judgment immediately [at the pre-trial].
“As I said during argument, I wished to give further consideration to the contentions put forward by certain counterparties, and to reflect on the arguments I received from the parties.”
Confidential information
Mellor outlined “three distinct parts” to the arguments. The first “and perhaps most important” concerns whether specified persons at Lenovo should have access to all financial information in InterDigital’s patent licence agreements, which is currently for lawyers eyes only.
Mellor agreed that Lenovo should be privy to this information, saying: “This new tier [of confidentiality] is essential to allow Lenovo (via their Specified Persons) to be able to participate in a meaningful way in the lead up to and in the FRAND trial. None of the counterparty representations persuade me otherwise.”
Secondly, Mellor addressed certain pieces of anonymised data, which conceals the identities of certain InterDigital licensees.
Lenovo suggested that these identities should be made non-confidential, claiming the information is exactly the same type disclosed in a prior Patents Court FRAND trial Unwired Planet.
While Mellor agreed that the information was, for the most part, appropriately classified, he ruled that certain “weighted average figures” should be designated non-confidential.
Finally, the court was asked to address whether three extracts from conclusions outlined in Lenovo’s expert report should be classified as confidential.
Again, Mellor sided agreeLenovo , saying: “If Lenovo are content that no confidentiality should attach to these extracts, then I consider it is appropriate to re-designate them as non-confidential.
“These extracts really define part of the battle lines which will be in issue at trial and it is difficult to see how any public judgment from the FRAND trial could be meaningful without this type of information being included.”
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