Context:
- To the automotive industry, Nokia offers standard-essential patent (SEP) licenses bilaterally (January 20, 2026 ip fray article) or, with respect to cellular but not Wi-Fi SEPs, through Avanci.
- Last summer, Nokia brought SEP enforcement actions against Geely, some of whose subsidiaries have an Avanci license including Nokia’s cellular SEPs, in the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the Munich I Regional Court (July 22, 2025 ip fray article). Both courts later granted Nokia an anti-antisuit injunction (AASI) (April 22, 2026 ip fray article).
- The Munich I Regional Court scheduled a trial in Nokia v. Geely, case no. 7 O 9322/25, for 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM today. That same panel has previously issued bench rulings at the end of SEP cases. Another automaker, Renault, recently took a SEP license from Broadcom due to the enforcement of a Munich injunction (May 13, 2026 ip fray article).
- Two other companies whose cellular SEPs Geely could license through Avanci sued Geely as well:
- Sun Patent Trust filed in the UPC (December 10, 2025 ip fray article), and
- IP Bridge obtained a preliminary injunction (PI) in Brazil, which was however stayed by an appellate judge who routinely does so but in two out of three prior cases got overruled by the panel (April 24, 2026 ip fray article). So there was still some risk to Geely in Brazil, also in light of what just happened there in a Sun Patent Trust v. Great Wall Motor (GWM) case (May 20, 2026 ip fray article).
To Read The Full Story
Continue reading your article with a Membership
It appears that the two AASIs (from the UPC and the Munich I Regional Court) helped resolve this dispute. Should Geely not have settled with Sun Patent Trust yet, the need for an AASI may arise given pending proceedings in a court in Ningbo, China.1
The role that AASIs play in such disputes is an important factor ahead of next week’s Amazon v. InterDigital anti-interference injunction appeal in the UPC’s Court of Appeal (CoA), which ip fray will attend (March 25, 2026 ip fray article). A statement by a UK judge earlier this week also underscored the need for the UPC to be able to defend its jurisdiction (May 18, 2026 ip fray article).
Courts and counsel
Munich I Regional Court: Presiding Judge Dr. Oliver Schoen (“Schön”; March 30, 2026 ip fray interview), Judge Katalin Tözsér, and Judge Dr. Florian Schweyer.
UPC Mannheim LD: Presiding Judge Prof. Peter Tochtermann; Judge-rapporteur Tobias Sender; Judge Mojca Mlakar (Ljubljana, Slovenia) for the infringement proceedings and Judge András Kupecz2 for the AASI proceedings; and (for the infringement proceedings only) Technically Qualified Judge Eric Augarde.
Counsel for Nokia:
- Arnold Ruess’s (ip fray firm profile with numerous achievements including the InterDigital v. Amazon AILIs). Cordula Schumacher, Jan Wergin, Tim Smentkowski, Julija Kravtsova, Tuğçe Altun, and (in the AASI proceedings) Chanisar Bangkomnet and Matthias Klaembt (“Klämbt”).
- Samson & Partner patent attorneys Dr. Cletus von Pichler and Dr. Werner Kistler.
Counsel for Geely: Hogan Lovells’s (ip fray firm profile) Dr. Steffen Steininger. For Hogan Lovells it is presumably positive that the firm does not need to litigate the further AASI proceedings, especially in the UPC’s Mannheim LD, where a different firm is representing Amazon while Hogan Lovells UK (for which the firm’s German partners are not responsible in any way) obtained a UK antisuit injunction and took subsequent procedural steps that led to friction between the High Court of Justice for England and Wales (EWHC) and the UPC.
- One of our Chinese contributors, Jared Cho, has recently looked up a court database and found the following case:
Plaintiff: Geely Automobile Group Co., Ltd.; Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., Ltd.
Defendant: Sun Patent Trust
Court: Ningbo Intermediate People’s Court, Zhejiang – Intellectual Property Court, Tribunal No. 3 (not a major SEP venue, but Geely’s “home court”)
Case No.: (2026) Zhe 02 Zhi Min Chu No. 13 ↩︎ - Judge Kupecz’s experience with anti-interference injunctions is presumably the reason for which he joined the two Mannheim-based panel in that particular context, whlie Judge Mlakar completed the panel for the infringement proceedings. ↩︎