So far 2024 has been a happening year for the Indian SEP litigation scene. In January we saw Nokia and Oppo settling their SEP disputes around the world. In February, the Delhi High Court directed Oppo to deposit an undisclosed sum as an interim deposit in its SEP dispute with Interdigital. And now, bringing the summer heat a little early in March for Lava, the Delhi High Court has imposed damages worth a whooping INR 244 Crores on the Indian smartphone manufacturer in its long standing dispute with Ericsson. The order is expected to be out next week and we’ll come with a detailed post on it soon after!
As per the report by Sukanya Sarkar at Managing IP (paywalled), the Court found Lava guilty of infringing Ericsson’s seven patents on 2G, EDGE, and 3G technology, but, notably also revoked one of Ericsson’s patents for lack of novelty.
As discussed by Inika in her detailed post here, it all started in 2015 when Lava alleged before a Noida district court that Ericsson was not making the suit patents available on reasonable royalties. Later, Ericsson instituted a patent infringement suit against Lava before the Delhi High Court alleging that Lava shied away from negotiating a fair and reasonable license rate. In its defence, Lava argued that Ericsson’s patents were not essential and were invalid.
Consequently, in 2016, the Delhi High Court passed an interim injunction against Lava subject to the condition that Lava deposits INR 50 Crores with the Court as a security amount.
Though we have previously seen courts undertake FRAND determinations (for instance see the Single Judge order in the Intex- Ericsson SEP dispute , which was upheld by a Division Bench in 2023) this may perhaps be the first case where the Court has made a determination beyond the interim stages. (In case readers are aware of any other cases, please do let us know in the comments below). Interestingly, as reported in Singh & Singh’s Linkedin update here, the Court seemed to have followed the Ericsson- Intex DB order’s rationale to find Lava guilty of infringing Ericsson’s patent. This may seem like a deja vu, since the 2016 interim injunction order was also heavily influenced by the Ericsson-Intex Single Judge interim injunction order. Now, this could very well be because the eight suit patents were same in both the matters (see Inika’s post above). But this decision now opens up new questions regarding the validity of that one revoked patent in the still ongoing Intex-Ericsson case (CS(COMM) 769/2016). What role is this determination going to play there? Also, considering that in the Ericsson- Intex Division Bench order, the Court only expressed its “prima facie” opinion, it makes one wonder about the precedential value of these orders in final adjudication of the dispute.
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- Source: https://spicyip.com/2024/03/delhi-high-court-imposes-damages-worth-inr-244-crores-on-lava-in-the-ericsson-lava-sep-dispute.html
