#10.08 Intellectual Property Alerts4 articles
1. LG sued Vivo in India over 4G and 5G SEP disputes
South Korean electronics giant LG Electronics sued Vivo in India's Delhi High Court and sought a permanent injunction involving five standard-essential patents related to 4G and 5G technology, which follow 3GPP standards. LG and Vivo had previously tried to resolve the dispute through pre-litigation mediation, but the two parties had not reached a settlement after 50 hearings and had now resorted to litigation.
It is reported that India first introduced a pre-litigation mediation procedure in 2018, requiring parties to seek an "amicable" way to resolve their disputes before litigation, but it is not a mandatory requirement, and plaintiffs can still seek an emergency injunction. The parties to the case may choose to seek mediation in different venues, including the Delhi High Court Mediation Centre, where mediation was conducted in this case, the Mumbai High Court Mediation Centre, etc.
In recent years, more and more parties to patent disputes have become dissatisfied with the lengthy and expensive multi-jurisdictional litigation of traditional patent litigation, and ADR has generally shown an increasing trend in India. Pravin Anand, defense lawyer in LG Electronics' dispute with Vivo, said: "More and more SEP holders are starting to negotiate with the Delhi High Court Mediation Centre, and foreign companies have invoked this mechanism with great success – including against some unbona fide Indian licensees. As a result, a major telecommunications company used a mediation process to issue licences to such entities on a large scale. These transactions demonstrate that pre-litigation mediation exerts the necessary pressures that are clearly lacking in the conventional business environment. ”
However, if timely relief in the form of an injunction cannot be obtained, the attractiveness of pre-litigation mediation will be greatly reduced for patentees. If the Delhi High Court considers that the case is not urgent, it has the power to appoint a mediator or a panel of mediators to resolve the dispute, but this is rare. The effectiveness of pre-litigation mediation as a universal means of dispute settlement is questionable.
At the Delhi High Court's annual mediation conference in April, Judge Satish Chandra Sharma said that "pre-litigation mediation is expanding" and that "even the most complex issues fall within the scope of mediation," while mediation success rates are low and low. During LG's pre-litigation mediation process with Vivo, more than 50 hearings have been held, and the two parties still have not reached a consensus.
The LG vs. Vivo case is an important part of the SEP dispute in the field of communications, and the outcome of this case will determine whether India becomes a strong venue for global SEP disputes. As a key market in the global smartphone market, India has continued to strengthen its important practice in the field of SEP trials in recent years. In February, the Delhi High Court heard Nokia's SEP patent dispute with OPPO, and in August, India's Supreme Court upheld the Delhi High Court's interim order requiring OPPO to pay a 23% bond on its 2018 patent license agreement with Nokia (based on OPPO's sales in the Indian market accounting for 23% of its total global sales).
So far, LG Electronics and Vivo have not issued a public statement on the case, and a hearing to discuss the charter of the confidential club between the parties is scheduled for November 1, and IP Frontier will continue to pay attention.
2.X Social Media sued Social Media for trademark infringement
After Twitter changed its name to X, it seemed inevitable to trigger lawsuits from other brands. Recently, X, a Florida-based advertising company, X Social Media LLC (XSM), announced that it was suing X Corp., accusing X Corp. of violating Florida law for "unfair competition, trademark and service mark infringement."
XSM, WRITING IN ITS COMPLAINT, SAID IT HAD BEEN USING ITS REGISTERED TRADEMARK "X SOCIALMEDIA" SINCE 2016. XSM alleges that as a result of X Corp.'s rebranding and the use of the "X" logo, the company "has suffered a loss of revenue from related businesses."
It's unclear what the odds are of XSM's lawsuit, but IT House found that Alexandra Roberts, a law professor, told The Verge earlier this year that a "broad registration" of the "X" trademark could make it difficult for any single X-branded service to enforce a claim against another company — whether it's Musk's X or a company like X Social Media. (Source: IT House)
3. The BBC blocks OpenAI from scraping data, but is open to AI being used for news
On October 7, the BBC, the UK's largest news organization, released its principles for evaluating the use of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), including research and production for news, archives and "personalized experiences".
Rodri Tarfan Davis, the BBC's director of national affairs, said in a blog post that the broadcaster believes AI technology offers opportunities to "bring more value to our viewers and society".
He set out three guiding principles that the BBC will always act in the best interests of the public, prioritise talent and creativity by respecting artists' rights, and remain open and transparent about AI-generated content.
The BBC said it would work with tech companies, other media organisations and regulators to safely develop generative AI, with a focus on maintaining trust in the news industry.
But while the BBC is determining how best to use generative AI, it is also preventing web crawlers such as OpenAI and Common Crawl from accessing BBC websites. The broadcaster joins news organizations such as CNN, The New York Times, Reuters, and others in blocking web crawlers from accessing its copyrighted content. Davis said the move was to "safeguard the interests of licence payers" and that it would not be in the public interest to train AI models with BBC data without the BBC's permission.
Other news organizations have also offered their views on the technology. The Associated Press, which released its own guidelines earlier this year, has also partnered with OpenAI to share its content to train GPT models. (Source: IT House)
4. Valve loses: The European Court of Justice upholds the antitrust fine it incurred for "locking up the region"
On September 27, the Court of Justice of the European Union rejected Valve's appeal, upholding antitrust fines against it and several other game publishers that had previously been found to have violated the EU's single market rules for imposing geo-blocking.
Regional blocking means that PC game activation codes sold by some game publishers in certain countries of the European Union can only be used in that country to prevent consumers from taking advantage of the lower price of games in these countries to buy games through some technical means, which is considered by the European Commission to limit consumer choice.
The European Commission launched an antitrust investigation into regional lockdowns in April 2019, involving several major game publishers, including Valve, ZeniMax, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Focus Home Interactive, and Koch Media. In 2021, the EU imposed fines on these companies. Among them, Valve was fined 1.6 million euros, ZeniMax was fined 1.6 million euros (currently about 12.368 million yuan), Focus Home Interactive was fined 2.8 million euros (currently about 21.644 million yuan), and Capcom and Bandai Namco were fined less than 400,000 euros (currently about 3.092 million yuan).
Valve appealed the EU's antitrust ruling at the time, arguing that copyright holders should have the right to charge different prices in different regions. However, this week the Court of Justice of the European Union rejected Valve's appeal, saying copyright holders cannot use copyright law to discriminate against prices or create "artificial price differences" in different countries.
It's unclear whether Valve will appeal again to take the case to a higher court. (Source: IT House)
Edited by Sharon