Nokia and HTC end patent litigation
Smartphone companies Nokia and HTC have ended their long-running patent dispute and signed a “patent and technology collaboration agreement”.
The deal requires HTC to pay royalties to Nokia, which sued its Taiwanese rival for patent infringement in 2012. Since then, Nokia has asserted more than 50 patents against HTC in seven countries.
Announced on February 7, the deal also “involves” HTC's patents directed to LTE, a mobile standard for the wireless communication of high-speed data.
Nokia already licenses some of its standard-essential patents to HTC.
“We are very pleased to have reached a settlement and collaboration agreement with HTC,” said Paul Melin, chief intellectual property officer at Nokia. “This agreement validates Nokia's implementation patents and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities.”
Grace Lei, general counsel of HTC, added: “Nokia has one of the most preeminent patent portfolios in the industry ... HTC is pleased to come to this agreement, which will enable us to stay focused on innovation for consumers.”
The companies had been fighting in several jurisdictions, including the US, Japan and Germany. Most recently, in February this year, the Mannheim Regional Court ruled that HTC infringed a Nokia patent covering technology that enables modern mobile phones to work on old networks.
That was Nokia’s fourth German injunction against HTC in less than a year.
On February 10, the US International Trade Commission was set to review a preliminary ruling, from September last year, in which HTC was held to infringe two Nokia patents. The patents cover signals sent or received by tablets and mobile phones.
The truce between Nokia and HTC is the latest example of an Android user signing a patent licensing agreement, with the most recent between Ericsson and Samsung in January this year.
“We have increasing Android licences, and it appears that more are to follow here,” said Ulrich Blumenröder, a lawyer at Grünecker in Munich. “I envisage a general tendency to settle these issues amicably.”
“The main issue is that settlements in this field are just what is done at the moment, and they are coming in a lot more regularly than two or three years ago.”
He continued: “These litigations have proven not to be worthwhile for the litigants – they are too expensive and time consuming.
“Many lawsuits, not just with these parties, have often started with the expectation of a decision granting injunctive relief that forces the defendant into a very beneficial settlement for the patent owner.
“But almost always defendants have found some way around the specific injunction, proving that the benefit of getting a significant edge has not been fulfilled in the past,” he said.
The full terms of the agreement are confidential.
