Unwired Planet v Huawei and Conversant v Huawei and ZTE

UK Supreme Court - 26 August 2020

Caitlin Heard,CMS

The court was asked to determine how to address thecompeting interests of a patentee’s right to prevent infringement of its inventionsversus the need for manufacturers of mobile phones (implementors) to accesstechnology incorporated into an international standard at a reasonable cost.The mobile telecoms industry has sought to reconcile the interests of the twocompeting camps through the creation of standards development organisations(SDO). In Europe, the relevant SDO is the European Telecommunications StandardsInstitute (ETSI), whose intellectual property rights (IPR) policy seeks tobalance the interests of patent owners and implementors by requiring thatmembers who contribute IP to an international technical standard irrevocablyundertake to grant a licence that is fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory(FRAND) in respect of any patent that is essential to a technical standard (astandard essential patent (SEP)).