Conversant Wireless patent essential but invalid, high court rules
The English High Court has delivered a mixed ruling in an ongoing dispute over standard essential patents (SEPs) between Conversant Wireless Licensing and Huawei Technologies and ZTE.
In a judgment yesterday, July 4, Justice Arnold found Conversant’s patent is essential to an aspect of the 3G telecommunications standard and infringed by Huawei and ZTE, but invalid because the features in claim 1 added matter beyond what was originally in the patent application.
In July 2017, as reported by WIPR, Conversant sued both Huawei and ZTE for infringing a number of its SEPs relating to mobile phone technology (UK patent numbers 1,031,192; 0,978,210; 1,797,659; and 1,878,177).
It also asked the court to declare that its patents are essential to “certain telecommunications standards” and that the terms it had offered to Huawei and ZTE during licensing negotiations were compliant with fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) rules.
In response, Huawei and ZTE asked the English Court of Appeal to have the case thrown out on grounds of lack of jurisdiction, but the court rejected their argument that a Chinese court was the appropriate forum for the dispute.
The decision yesterday concerned the ‘659 patent, titled "Slow MAC-e for autonomous transmission in high speed uplink packet access along with service specific transmission time control".
In its arguments to the English High Court, Conversant claimed that its patent was essential to an aspect of the 3G universal mobile telecommunications standard.
It said that because the technology covered by the patent is used in phones made and sold by Huawei and ZTE, they infringe the patent.
Arnold concluded that the patent is essential to the technology it claims and would therefore be infringed if it is valid.
But he found claim 1 of the patent to be invalid for added matter as it discloses new information about the invention, which was not included at the time of application for the patent.
Huawei and ZTE had also sought to invalidate the patent on grounds of obviousness over prior art, but Arnold rejected these arguments.
While the patent was found to be essential, Arnold’s ruling that it is invalid means Conversant cannot enforce it against Huawei and ZTE.
The ruling also means Huawei and ZTE do not need to licence the patent from Conversant.
The dispute between the parties in regards to the other patents in Conversant’s original complaint (patents ‘192, ‘210 and ‘177) is continuing and will be heard separately.
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