Context: In mid-July, we broke the news that Qualcomm was suing smartphone maker Transsion, which operates under different brands that collectively dominate the African smartphone market and are also sold in some other regions, over four non-standard-essential patents (non-SEPs) in India (mid-July LinkedIn post by ip fray). We later discovered some Qualcomm v. Transsion filings in the Unified Patent Court (UPC), starting with the one on which we reported on July 25, 2024.
What’s new: The Indian case over four patents has just been withdrawn as ip fray learned from two independent sources. The parties have apparently settled their dispute, at least in India but more likely on a global basis. Transsion was already previously licensed to Qualcomm’s 5G patents, but not to patents reading on other (older) standards, nor to Qualcomm’s non-SEPs.
Direct impact: The terms will probably not become known, and it is unclear whether licensing costs will adversely affect Transsion’s competitiveness in African and other extremely price-sensitive markets.
Wider ramifications: It also will not be known (unless and until other litigation sheds light on it) whether the terms of Qualcomm’s license agreement with Transsion are consistent with the rates Qualcomm is collecting from other industry players. A license agreement between Huawei and Qualcomm expired on December 31, 2024, as we learned from a Huawei v. Netgear UPC ruling (December 18, 2024 ip fray article). And Apple is hoping to finally start using its own baseband chips, possibly in some devices already in 2025, and will presumably disagree with Qualcomm on patent license fees once it no longer needs to buy any Qualcomm modem chips. So there is a potential for other disputes between Qualcomm and current or past licensees.
We learned from two independent sources that counsel for Qualcomm as well as Transsion told the Delhi High Court at a hearing today that there was a confidential settlement, and that the case should be dropped without prejudice.
There will soon be a court order dismissing the case.
Qualcomm has once again resolved a licensing dispute without having to take the risk of any of its declared-essential patents being deemed non-essential by a court of law. The patents-in-suit, up to this point, were non-SEPs. In the dispute with Apple, which settled in 2019, Qualcomm simply waived its rights to enforce a number of cellular SEPs against Apple so as to avoid any litigation over the technical merits of those patents. That tactic annoyed Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, but there was nothing he could do about Qualcomm simply not wanting to put any of its SEPs at risk.
It will now be interesting to see whether Qualcomm and Huawei have renewed, or will reach an agreement to renew, instead of going to court. We have not seen any news about that, so all we know from a publicly accessible court filing (which was later replaced with a more heavily redacted version) is that the previous agreement expired a little more than two weeks ago.