Philips accuses companies of infringing SEP patents
Koninklijke Philips NV filed a spate of suits against six companies at the District Court for the District of Delaware yesterday, December 17, accusing them of infringing its 3G and 4G wireless standard-essential patents.
Philips sued Thales, Telit Communications, Quectel Wireless Solutions, Xirgo Technologies, Laird Connectivity and CalAmp, alleging that they had refused fair terms to licence its patents, US numbers 9,178,577, 9,635,599, 7,089,028 , 8,195,216, 8,134,929 and 10,257,814, all of which cover cellular communication modules.
In the complaints, Philips held that its patent portfolio includes more than 60,000 patents, and that it shares its innovation with others through “its pioneering role in offering access to its technology through licensing”. In this way, it said, Philips has been able to share its innovations with many other companies.
The company claimed that for years it has repeatedly offered to licence the rights to its world-wide portfolio that includes the disputed patents to these companies, but that they had refused to accept these terms.
“The devices claimed in the asserted patents have proved to be of great importance to the field of digital cellular communications...These patents, and others, are fundamental technology to the manufacture and sale of cellular communication modules and related internet of things...devices,” said the complaints.
In its complaints, Philips pointed to the UK Supreme Court’s ruling in Unwired Planet v Conversant Wireless Licensing (2020), which observed that “implementers who were infringing the patents would have an incentive to continue infringing until, patent by patent, and country by country, [until] they were compelled to pay royalties.”
It further added that the companies have “no intention of ever agreeing to the world-wide license that Philips offers for its global portfolio consistent with [European Telecommunications Standards Institute] practices”.
It said that companies collect “vast sums of money in revenues through infringement in a manner consistent with an ‘efficient infringement’ tactical approach”. In its complaints against Quectel and Telit, Philips accused the companies of being aware of their infringement for more than half a decade or of being “willfully blind” to such infringement. Philips also stated that such companies “maintain a fund to pay damages in the event that they are ever required to pay royalties by a court such as this one... either directly or through indemnification of their customers”.
WIPR has approached all the involved companies for comment.
