Context: Recently, a MediaTek case against Huawei in the UK, with a wide range of claims from antitrust to FRAND to declaratory judgment to infringement, survived a jurisdictional challenge, as the hurdle at that stage is low (March 2025 LinkedIn post by ip fray)
What’s new: The two latest infringement complaints listed in the public part of the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) case registry are Huawei v. MediaTek cases that were filed with the Munich Local Division in late March.
Direct impact: The UPC’s ability to order injunctions for up to 18 European countries makes it a key venue in any such dispute, though the number one market (by a wide margin) in connection with this dispute is China. Presumably MediaTek will want to use the English courts to derail any proceedings in other jurisdictions, including the UPC.
Wider ramifications: With the recent settlements between Nokia and Amazon (March 31, 2025 ip fray article) as well as Ericsson and Lenovo (April 3, 2025 ip fray article), there are now two other standard-essential patent (SEP) disputes in which the question of extraterritorial overreach by the English courts is key: ZTE-Samsung (February 13, 2025 ip fray article) and Huawei-MediaTek. There is also a UK Supreme Court (UKSC) appeal by Tesla (April 11, 2025 ip fray article), but that one is different in various ways and has been rejected by two courts.
New UPC cases
In case no. ACT_13761/2025, Huawei is asserting EP3905840 (“Signal indication for flexible new radio (nr) long term evolution (lte) coexistence”). In case no. ACT_14180/2025, the patent-in-suit is EP4142215 (“Method and apparatus for obtaining ue [user equipment] security capabilities”).
The panel to which both cases were assigned consists of Presiding Judge Ulrike Voss (“Voß” in German), Judge Dr. Daniel Voss (“Voß” in German) and Judge András Kupecz (August 30, 2024 ip fray interview).
In both cases, MediaTek is being defended by Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner’s Dr. Antje Brambrink. In the first case, Huawei’s lead counsel is Bird & Bird’s Dr. Matthias Meyer, and in the second case by Clifford Chance’s Dr. Tobias Hessel. The two firms collaborated as they were representing Huawei against Netgear. By the way, that dispute was settled through a license from a Sisvel-run WiFi 6 pool (January 4, 2025 ip fray article) that counts both Huawei and MediaTek among its licensors (licensor list on pool webpage). What makes that fact all the more interesting is this angle: MediaTek is now receiving royalties, through its share in that pool, from Netgear, and it was Huawei’s infringement litigation that paved the way for the pool license. MediaTek is now telling courts in the UK (and presumably elsewhere) that Huawei was abusing SEPs, but that concern does not appear to be so grave that MediaTek would have to have qualms over partnering with Huawei via a Sisvel SEP pool.
Chinese center of gravity
Huawei is based in Shenzhen and MediaTek manufactures in China, too. Plus, MediaTek’s top ten customers are based there. Not only did Huawei bring litigation against MediaTek in China, but also vice versa. A recent UK judgment (on a jurisdictional challenge) quotes from MediaTek’s own pleadings:
“MediaTek has also instituted proceedings before the Munich Regional Court in Germany and before the courts of Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Zhengzhou in the PRC, asserting patent infringement by Huawei of German and Chinese patents. In addition, MediaTek has brought an anti-trust claim in the Beijing Intellectual Property Court.”
It appears that the Chinese part of the dispute is all about Chinese patents. But Chinese courts can also set global rates. As we reported yesterday, it appears that the European Commission has lost in a World Trade Organization proceeding where the EU was challenging China’s SEP case law with a view to antisuit injunctions (April 10, 2025 ip fray article).
When the UK decided in Unwired Planet v. Huawei that its courts should set a global FRAND rate even when a party had only a minuscule portion of its worldwide sales in that country, the floodgates were opened to extraterritorial decisions. Now, again, Huawei is involved and the situation is even clearer than in the late 2010s. At this point, Huawei’s UK business comes down to almost negligible phone sales and a bit of maintenance for existing customers among mobile carriers.
Jurisdictional imperialism is not going to serve the UK well. There are various ways in which courts in other jurisdictions can strike back forcefully if need be. The idea of making the UK the world’s FRAND arbiter is not a well-thought-through one because in the end it will fail miserably.
The UK definitely has the potential to play a certain role in global SEP disputes, but at some point its courts have to recognize that there may very well be legitimate reasons for which some parties prefer to have their disputes resolved elsewhere.