Hao on ACT v. OPPO

As a follow-up to my post on Friday, which noted among other things a recent paper by Zhang Guangliang and Geng Bang titled An Active Exploration of Global Licensing Rate Adjudication Methods for Standard Essential Patents:  The Chinese OPPO v. Nokia Case, 15 Queen Mary J. Intell. Prop. 238 (2025), I should mention another recent paper discussing the other major Chinese SEP case from late 2023, Advanced Codec Technology, LLC v. Guandong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Co.  The paper is by Yuan Hao and is titled Advanced Codec Technology, LLC v. Guangdong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Co., Ltd.: First Substantive Determination of FRAND License Fee by the Chinese Supreme People’s Court, forthcoming in FRAND Cases in Context (Jorge L. Contreras, ed., Edward Elgar forthcoming).  (Professor Contreras’ edited volume FRAND Cases in Context, to which I also continued a chapter—on the U.S. Apple v. Motorola litigation—should be out in a few months, I would think.)  Here is a link to the draft paper, and here is the abstract:

This book chapter examines Advanced Codec Technology, LLC v. Guangdong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Co., Ltd., the Supreme People's Court of China's first substantive determination of a FRAND license fee. This judgment is significant for its explicit recognition of the comparative license approach (CLA) as a methodology for assessing FRAND royalties, coupled with concrete guidelines for selecting truly comparable licenses. Equally important, the Court characterized FRAND licensing disputes as di yue guo shi (pre-contractual obligations, or culpa in contrahendo) under Article 500 of the Civil Code, establishing a structured framework for assessing both SEP holders' and implementers' faults during negotiations. By integrating fault assessment into damages apportionment, the judgment underscores that both parties must engage in good-faith negotiation efforts, potentially shifting Chinese FRAND litigation toward a more procedure-oriented model. This chapter further situates ACT v. Oppo within the broader trajectory of Chinese SEP jurisprudence, compares it with other landmark cases, and identifies unresolved questions for future clarification by the SPC-ranging from the scope of FRAND-specific good faith, to the role of fault in damages calculation, to thresholds for "adequate negotiations." Properly resolving these open issues will enhance the doctrinal coherence of Chinese FRAND law and its alignment with global SEP enforcement practices.

Unlike the OPPO v. Nokia case, which resulted in the first-ever Chinese case awarding global FRAND royalties, the Advanced Codec case awarded China-only royalties; but it is significant for its discussion of comparable licenses, fault, and the doctrinal basis for Chinese courts’ awarding of FRAND royalties—and, of course, because unlike the other case it comes from the Supreme People’s Court.  In any event, this is a very informative article.