Delhi High Court Rejects InterDigital’s Plea to Access Oppo’s Licensing Agreements With Ericsson And Orange SA

Chinese company Oppo was recently slapped Rs 5 lakh penalty by the Delhi High Court over a patent infringement case and was even warned that its sales could be banned in India if it fails to deposit royalties. In this case, the US-based Interdigital sued Oppo, Realme, and OnePlus for having infringed patent rights held by InterDigital over SEPs needed to provide 3G, 4G, and 5G services, and for playing high-definition videos. An interesting turn in the case came when InterDigital filed a plea for accessing the licensing agreements between Oppo, Realme, and OnePlus and two Standard Essential Patent (SEP) licensors, namely Ericsson and Orange SA. The court rejected this plea saying

“This Court is of the opinion that the implementer i.e. defendants’ agreements with other SEP licensors like Ericsson and Orange SA, are not relevant, at least at this stage, for determination of FRAND rates,” 

And also said that it’s up to InterDigital to show the FRAND rates on which it has earlier agreed upon with other, third parties to support its claim. The confidentiality of the agreement that can be affected was also considered. The defendants in the case have to say that InterDigital had already licensed the SEPs to Qualcomm which means no further requirement to buy it from InterDigital. On the other hand, InterDigital says that the patent infringement claim is linked to the use of SEPs by the defendants in the mobile handsets as a whole. Now court has called for the agreement by both the defendants and the plaintiff that they made with Qualcomm. The court has assured that the sensitive information would be kept confidential.