Further Commentary on Conversant v. Huawei

Yesterday's post noted a post by Eibhlin Vardy on IPKat discussing Mr. Justice Carr's ruling earlier this week in Conversant Wireless Licensing S.A.R.L v Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd, ZTE Corporation and Ors [2018] EWHC 808 (Pat), concluding  that the court has jurisdiction to decide a global FRAND rate, even though the U.K. sales by Huawei and ZTE account for less than 1% of global sales.  Here are a couple of more commentaries, one by Nicholas Fox on EPLaw and another by Tristan Sherliker on Bird & Bird's blog, who notes that Mr. Justice Carr

assessed the conduct of negotiations and highlighted key issues that, he said, supported Conversant’s case for an injunction. In particular he referred to the following points, which will provide further guidance from the courts about how negotiations might be handled in a FRANDly manner:

• the length of negotiations (several years) had not led to much progress;
• the fact that no interim royalty payments had been made;
• Huawei’s position that they would not take a global portfolio licence; and
• that the Defendants did not acknowledge (when requested) that they were willing to take a licence, or that their willingness was unconditional.