The Delhi High Court has agreed in part with Xiaomi that Ericsson concealed relevant information about two of its 3G patents, and has withdrawn the interim injunction on Xiaomi as it was based on these patents, reports SpicyIP.
Xiaomi argued that Ericsson was not entitled to the injunction as Xiaomi had already got a license for the patents in question from Qualcomm, which had a license with Ericsson. Xiaomi paid Qualcomm royalties for the patent use, which in turn paid Ericsson. Ericsson had concealed this information before the single judge in 2014, and hence the now-revoked injunction was passed.
The patents in question involve 2 of Ericsson’s 3G patents; IN229632 and IN240471. Other than this, there are 6 more patents that Ericsson claims Xiaomi infringed on, including 5 AMR patents and 1 Edge patent.
The court had previously stopped Xiaomi from importing and selling handsets in India after Ericsson’s complaint in December 2014. An ex-parte interim injunction by the court has directed custom officials to stop the imports and restrain Xiaomi from selling, advertising, manufacturing or importing devices that infringe on Ericsson’s standard essential patents (SEP).
Following this, on December 16 Xiaomi was allowed to import or sell Qualcomm chipset-based handsets in India till the next hearing, which was scheduled for March 18, 2015. This essentially meant that Xiaomi would be able to sell Redmi Note 4G and Redmi 1S in India while Redmi Note that runs on Mediatek-based chipset would continue to remain banned.
Interestingly, 3 months post the imposition of the injunction, Ericsson accused Xiaomi of violating the court’s order by continued selling the non-Qualcomm handsets through a website called xiaomishop. At the time, Xiaomi India Head Manu Jain told Medianama that sales by Xiaomishop were entirely without authorization from Xiaomi, and has no affiliation with the company in any way.
Ericsson’s previous lawsuits
Note that Ericsson had earlier filed similar patent infringement lawsuits against Micromax in 2013 and Intex in 2014. Interestingly, following Micromax’s complaint, in December 2013, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) ordered an antitrust probe against Ericsson for allegedly charging a higher royalty for its GSM technology patents. Post the current ruling, Micromax and Intex could also see some relief in their cases.
Court judgement pdf here.
Image source: Flickr user Ericsson under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0
