Context: Finland-based smartphone maker HMD has recently been sued in the Unified Patent Court (UPC) by Germany’s Fraunhofer research institute (July 21, 2025 ip fray article). Other licensors of Via LA’s Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) pool have also brought UPC infringement lawsuits against HMD (May 22, 2025 ip fray article).
What’s new: An order by the UPC’s Hamburg Local Division (LD) dated August 21, 2025 has now become publicly accessible (PDF (in German)). It denied HMD an extension of time for its answer to a Fraunhofer complaint. HMD presented various arguments for an extension, among them the school vacation season that is relevant to lawyers with school-age children, but above all said that it needed more time to prepare its FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) defense due to the need to address not only bilateral but also pool licensing negotiations. The judge-rapporteur found those arguments unavailing, even more so in light of the fact that Via already made a licensing offer in December 2017, and noted that the UPC’s deadlines are sufficiently generous that they can also be kept during the main vacation season of the year.
Direct impact: HMD obviously sought to delay the proceedings, as many defendants do, but unsuccessfully so.
Wider ramifications: The order is limited to the procedural question at issue, but it does not bode well for HMD’s forthcoming FRAND defense that the passage of time since Via’s first offer is held against it. It is at an increased risk of being deemed an unwilling licensee.
In formal terms, the question of an implementer’s willingness to take licenses on FRAND terms must be addressed case by case, or at least dispute by dispute. But psychologically it does not help when facts come to light that make a party appear to be an unwilling licensee.
Fraunhofer’s counsel described Via’s AAC pool (pool webpage) as the “gold standard” in its field. The published list of licensees includes (among many others) Amazon, Apple, Cisco, OPPO and Xiaomi, suggesting wide market acceptance, which also applies to VoiceAge EVS’s licensing program. The extent to which HMD invests in standard-essential patent (SEP) litigation is viewed by industry insiders as disproportionate to the absolute royalty amounts that are limited by HMD’s modest unit volumes, raising the suspicion of HMD potentially acting as a stalking horse for some puppet player seeking the devaluation of SEPs. Some are even wondering whether an extremely deep-pocketed organization that uses the same law firms in Germany is paying for some of the legal work directly. It will probably never be possible to verify such speculation, but the extent to which HMD has been defending against SEP infringement lawsuits flies in the face of what is known about SEP litigation economics.