Vivo sues Nokia! The fog has re-emerged under the controversy of unreasonable charges

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Source: IPRdaily Chinese Network (iprdaily.n)

Original title: Vivo sued Nokia! The fog has re-emerged under the controversy of unreasonable charges

IPRdaily Guide: Recently, Vivo has filed a lawsuit against Nokia, and the focus of the dispute between the two parties is the "FRAND license rate issue". In the rapidly developing 5G era, such an intensive patent dispute in the communication industry actually reflects the competition for the right to speak in patent fees by mobile phone manufacturers. OPPO's counterclaim against Nokia also proves this. After all, when the rising Chinese manufacturers gradually show brilliant results, it is inevitable that they will be constrained by the patents of some companies.

On March 16, vivo reportedly filed a lawsuit against Nokia, and the focus of the dispute between the two sides was the "FRAND license rate issue". Apparently, the two sides failed to reach an agreement on the issue of patent licensing, so Vivo launched a patent lawsuit against Nokia. As soon as this case came out, the dispute over the unreasonable license fee of Nokia 5G once again entered the public eye.

At the end of Nokia's unreasonable royalties

Today, Nokia mobile phones are rarely seen in the market, and Nokia, which has gradually faded out of the mobile phone market, still uses the intellectual property portfolio from Nokia Technologies, Nokia Networks and Alcatel-Lucent to master a large number of patented technologies related to mobile devices. The gradually maturing 5G market has allowed Nokia, whose mobile phone business is declining, to "exert force" on the battlefield of patent litigation, and patent licensing fees have gradually become an important source of revenue for Nokia in the world.

Judging from the 5G patent fees announced by Nokia in 2018, each 5G mobile phone using its patent should pay a patent fee of up to 3 euros (about 22.24 yuan) to Nokia. According to Nokia's financial report for the second quarter of 2021, its net sales revenue for the quarter was 5.313 billion euros, of which patent licensing revenue was 401 million euros, accounting for about 7.5%. [1] According to Nokia's latest Q4 2021 and full-year financial reports released on February 3, Nokia's licensing revenue in 2021 showed 1.502 billion euros, an increase of 8% from 1.402 billion euros in 2020.

Compared with the maximum license fee of 2.5 US dollars per Huawei and the patent fee of a single multi-mode 5G mobile phone of Ericsson can be as low as 2.5 US dollars per unit, it is not difficult to understand that patent licensing revenue can become an important part of Nokia's revenue. For Nokia, using patent fees as a weapon in the patent litigation dispute is already "like a fish in the water".

The patent sticks were swung one after another

Nokia is accustomed to using patent litigation to promote relevant entities to sign agreements with them, including Samsung, Apple, etc., many companies have encountered Nokia's patent stick threat. [2] The author combed through the patent litigation in recent years and found that not only in the foreign battlefield, Nokia Fire mobile phone manufacturers have long been "light and familiar" in China.

According to reports, as one of the largest 5G network patent brands, Nokia has successively licensed patents with Samsung, LG, HTC, Apple, BlackBerry and other mobile phone manufacturers, and has obtained a lot of benefits. With the world's fastest-growing smartphone market, the largest number of smartphone users and the largest number of smartphone manufacturers, China naturally cannot avoid cooperation with Nokia on 5G patented technology.

However, in the face of the "high patent fees" that have been criticized by domestic mobile phone manufacturers, many domestic mobile phone manufacturers have also been slow to reach a 5G patent authorization with Nokia. Soon, Nokia's patent stick began to wave to several major domestic mobile phone brands.

In 2016, Nokia announced that it had filed four patent infringement lawsuits against Huawei, pointing to three patent infringements against Huawei. In 2019, Nokia launched a worldwide patent lawsuit against Lenovo, after which the two parties reached a settlement, lenovo and Nokia signed a license agreement and paid a license fee to Nokia. Also in 2019, Nokia and Daimler also broke out a patent war and involved many suppliers. In 2021, Nokia launched patent infringement lawsuits against OPPO in the United Kingdom, France, India and other countries.

Until February, reports showed that Nokia was still in a patent dispute with Toyota, Honda and Nissan, and criticized American technology companies such as Apple for enjoying the huge value of cellular communication standard technology but being unwilling to pay reasonable fees.

The dilemma of the right to fight for the right to speak is to be broken

Under the approaching of such a fierce patent lawsuit by Nokia, the domestic mobile phone manufacturers that suffered from the disaster did not let themselves be in a "passive" state of acceptance and then "obediently obeyed", but gradually began to accumulate strength and face the "patent war" in an active way.

OPPO, which was once pushed to the forefront by Nokia, bravely stood up for this and actively responded to the lawsuit, and said that OPPO will give full play to OPPO's accumulation and advantages in the field of intellectual property rights under the premise of fully respecting intellectual property rights, and reach a reasonable licensing fee to ensure its orderly operation in the world. OPPO's approach is not only to protect its own interests, but also to speak out for other Chinese companies.

In the rapidly developing 5G era, such an intensive patent dispute in the communication industry actually reflects the competition for the right to speak in patent fees by mobile phone manufacturers. OPPO's counterclaim against Nokia also proves this. After all, when the rising Chinese manufacturers gradually show brilliant results, it is inevitable that they will be constrained by the patents of some companies.

From the perspective of industry development, patent fees should respect the principle of FRAND, that is, it is required that the quotation cannot be adjusted because of the applicant's market position and patent reserves. [3] From the perspective of the SEP patentee, the Frand principle is something that the patentee must follow when the right holder licenses the necessary patented technology to the standard implementer. However, because there are too many uncertainties and ambiguities in the Frand principle and the lack of operability in practical practice, determining the standard essential patent license fee based on this principle will be prone to abuse of rights by the standard essential patent holder, resulting in patent hijacking, license fee stacking and other issues. 【4】

And this patent war between Vivo and Nokia, is it not a fog that rises again under the dilemma?

As of now, according to overseas reports, Nokia has filed two pending patent lawsuits against Vivo in the Delhi High Court of India. [5] In addition, on March 17, Alexa Tiara, head of Vivo Indonesia, revealed that they confirmed that Nokia Technologies has filed a lawsuit against Vivo Indonesia over the dispute between the two parties. He also added that out of respect for the judicial process and in order not to harm any party in the proceedings, they were unable to provide any information about the case at this time. 【6】

In the follow-up development of the incident, IPRdaily will continue to pay attention to the report.

exegesis:

[1] LI Yuyang,LI Zhenghao. Nokia and OPPO sue for infringement of interests under the stick[N].China Business Daily, 2021-11-01(C01)

Chen Jialan. Nokia VS OPPO Global Patent "Litigation War" Enters Deep Water[N].China Business Daily, 2021-07-19(C01)

[3] Li Na, Lai Sasha. Ericsson sued the apple! Communication giant levies 5G patent fees[N].CBN Daily, 2021-10-19(A04)

Ma Min. Determination of Standard Essential Patent Licensing Fees under Frand Principle[J].Law and Society,2021,(09):59-60.

[5] The information comes from https://www.iam-media.com/frand/india-lawsuits-revealed-in-nokia-vivo-patent-dispute-likely-go-global

[6] Information from https://newsy-today.com/vivo-opens-voice-about-nokias-rp-597-m-lawsuit/

Source: IPRdaily Chinese Network (iprdaily.cn)

Editor: IPRdaily Wang Ying Proofreader: IPRdaily Zonghengjun