Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Beijing IP Court Awards Injunction, RMB 9 Million for Alleged Infringement of SEP

Here is a post on LinkedIn by Justin Shi of Ericsson titled "Landmark decision of SEP in China-Sony Mobile is determined to infringe a patent of Chinese company," and here is another story on Lexology from LexField Law Offices titled" Beijing Intellectual Property Court Grants First Injunction in a SEP infringement suit."  According to these sources, this morning the Beijing IP Court awarded a Chinese company, IWNCOMM, just under RMB 9 million (equal to three times the royalty IWNCOMM had submitted as a reference, from other licenses it had entered into) and an injunction for Sony's alleged infringement of a SEP relating to a standard (required in China) known as WAPI.   I hope to have more information on this decision as it comes in.

Update (March 23):  Here is a further write-up on the case by Jacob Schindler on the IAM Blog.  It links to both of the above two posts, as well as to this one on China Economic Net. 

Further Update (March 24):  As I note in my book, with regard to reasonable royalties article 21 of China's Patent Trial Guidelines permits courts to award "one to three times the patent licensing fee" (p.358).  Chinese law has not yet authorized treble damages for willful infringement, however--that's a separate issue--though I believe such a reform remains under consideration (see, e.g., here).

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