Beko, Arçelik have no FRAND case against Dolby (for multiple reasons): UPC Dusseldorf LD hearing

Context:

• The Unified Patent Court (UPC) has decided cases in which a FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) defense was unsuccessfully raised against a standard-essential patent (SEP) holder who had made a FRAND commitment (Panasonic v. OPPO: November 22, 2024 ip fray article; Huawei v. Netgear: December 18, 2024 ip fray article). There has also been a case where no FRAND defense was raised in the first place as there was no market power that could have been abused (Philips v. Belkin: September 13, 2024 ip fray article). Other options for charging mobile devices (than the Qi standard) exist.
• For today, the UPC’s Dusseldorf Local Division (LD) scheduled a Dolby v. Beko & Arçelik hearing. In that case, Dolby is asserting EP3605534 (“Audio decoding with selective post-filtering”) against the defendants’ implementation of the Opus audio codec standard. Dolby was not involved with the creation of that standard, thus there is no FRAND pledge. The standard slid headlong into the patent, which can be licensed by Opus implementers through a Vectis IP patent pool. Other companies, among them EPSON, took a license (October 10, 2025 ip fray article).

What’s new: In the morning, the court gave an introduction and heard the parties’ FRAND arguments, mostly but not entirely in open court. After the lunch break, the technical merits will be discussed in detail. It is clear, based on the views expressed by Presiding Judge Ronny Thomas on behalf of the panel during the public part, that Beko and Arçelik are far from prevailing on their FRAND defense. The court indicated that the question was not whether the FRAND defense would fail, but at what step of the analysis.