Context:
- Last year, ASUS and its affiliate Innovative Sonic Corporation (ISC) sued OPPO (and Xiaomi) in the Landgericht München I Munich (Munich I Regional Court) (April 4, 2025 ip fray article).
- In addition to defending itself vigorously, OPPO (which has never started a patent dispute) filed countersuits, among them the first-known Versatile Video Coding (VVC, H.266) lawsuit (December 17, 2025 ip fray article).
- OPPO also countersued in Munich. So far, OPPO has its own patents only for retaliatory purposes.
What’s new: On March 5, 2026 (last week’s Thursday), the Munich I Regional Court rendered a judgment holding ASUS’s 5G-capable mobile phones and laptops in infringement of EP3657687 (“Method and apparatus for determining frequency hopping of channel, and computer storage medium”), a 5G standard-essential patent (SEP) belonging to OPPO. It is the first such win for OPPO, a significant milestone for the company’s intellectual property department, which has repeatedly surprised through its resilience in litigation and by breaking new transactional ground, such as in patent agreements with automakers. As discussed below, a sales ban on ASUS’s 5G devices is not imminent, but could follow, theoretically even in the near term.
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Court
Munich I Regional Court, 7th Civil Chamber: Presiding Judge Dr. Oliver Schoen (“Schön”), Judge Katalin Tözsér, and Judge Dr. Florian Schweyer.
We will now try to find out who represented the parties.