Context: In 2024, Texas-based Headwater Research LLC initiated a global patent enforcement campaign against Samsung over the alleged infringement of several wireless patents, filing disputes in both the Eastern District of Texas and the Unified Patent Court (UPC). In the U.S. case, a jury found in April that all asserted patents were valid and infringed, awarding Headwater over $278 million in damages (April 25, 2025 jury verdict). The European prong of the dispute is being heard by both the UPC’s Munich Local Division (LD) and Dusseldorf LD, with an upcoming hearing in the former case scheduled for this Friday (August 1, 2025). Headwater has sought damages and a permanent injunction over both EP2391947 (“Verifiable device assisted service policy implementation”) and EP3110069 (“Device-assisted services for protecting network capacity”), but Samsung has denied infringing both patents and is seeking to dismiss both actions. In the Dusseldorf case, Samsung also filed a counterclaim for revocation of EP3110069.
What’s new: The Dusseldorf LD has today rejected Headwater’s infringement action and revoked EP3110069, after finding Samsung’s revocation counterclaim based on “added matter” was “well-founded”.
Direct impact: The decision is good news for Samsung, which has recently been dealt a couple of blows in patent licensing and litigation (InterDigital arbitration win: July 30, 2025 ip fray article and Netlist suit: July 30, 2025 ip fray article). This will also help it in the overall dispute with Headwater, which the patentee was winning thanks to the U.S. jury verdict in April.
Wider ramifications: The Dusseldorf LD’s decision also states that the UPC can reject a new line of arguments pursuant to R. 9.2 of the Rules of Procedure (RoP) in a case where the issue has been raised from the outset and the new argument is based on completely different passages of a lengthy document. It added: “Neither the UPC nor the other party may be forced to deal with it from scratch. This undermines the concept of the front-loaded procedure established by the RoP.”
This is the decision:
Headwater’s complaint was partly based on the source code of Google’s Android mobile operating system. A substantial part of Android’s system is open source, so the code can be inspected by patentees looking for infringements. The decision states:
“The Android system comprises a Data Saver functionality, which is at the centre of the dispute in question. The advantages and effects of that functionality are generally described on the source.android.com website for Android developers, which is shown in the following, slightly reduced excerpt taken from the Statement of claim.”
In its counterclaim, Samsung brought an invalidity attack based on added matter, meaning it sought to invalidate Headwater’s patent by arguing that the patentee added elements to the claim language that do not have sufficient support in the original patent application.
The features Headwater referenced in the hearing are not disclosed in the earlier application as originally filed because “the processor determines whether a network service usage activity is running in the background (resp. foreground), instead of whether a (first) device application is running in the background (resp. foreground), as claimed”, it stated.
The RoP at question in this case is:
The Court may disregard any step, fact, evidence or argument which a party has not taken or submitted in accordance with a time limit set by the Court or these Rules.
Following this RoP, the court agreed with Samsung’s view, ruling:
In line with the case law established in Tridonic./.CUPOWER (LD Düsseldorf, Decision of 7 March 2025, UPC_CFI_459/2023), Claimant´s new line of arguments has to be rejected pursuant to R. 9.2 RoP. As the issue has been raised from the outset and the new argument is based on completely different passages of a lengthy document, neither the Court nor the other party may be forced to deal with it from scratch. Deciding otherwise would undermine the concept of front-loaded procedure established by the Rules of Procedure. In this particular case, the issue of added-matter and the disclosure of an application running in the background have been disputed from the very beginning and SP2 comprises over 200 pages. Deriving the disclosure of a feature in dispute from three parts of SP2 never mentioned before in the context of the main request of claim 1 and putting forward a new argument of a general concept the claim would be based on could easily have been done in accordance with the time limits set by the Rules of Procedure.
The court rejected all Samsung’s other invalidity arguments, including “vindication” (an ownership-inventorship issue). The other arguments did not have to be adjudicated because the added matter argument was dispositive of the case.
Court and Counsel
Presiding Judge Ronny Thomas, Judge-rapporteur Dr Bérénice Thom, Judge Peter Agergaard (from Copenhagen, Denmark), and Technically Qualified Judge Eric Augarde.
Headwater is being represented by Dr. Michael Schneider and Jochen Ehlers at EisenfĂĽhr Speiser.
Meanwhile, Samsung is being represented by Dr. Martin Köhler of Hoyng Rokh Monegier.