Olivia Sophie Rafferty contributed to this article.
Licks Attorneys (ip fray firm profile) yesterday held an ICT Patent Litigation Seminar on Technical and Scientific Evidence. The conference took place at the firm’s offices in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, (and online) and was by invitation only. Supported by Ocean Tomo, the seminar included speakers such as Brazilian judges, an official from Brazil’s antitrust authority CADE (Conselho Administrativo de Defesa EconĂ´mica), in-house counsel, and attorneys from both Licks and other local firms.
Below is a short breakdown of the highlights from the one-day event.
Expert evidence key factor in putting Brazil on IP enforcement map
The seminar kicked off with opening remarks by Licks Attorneys founder Otto Licks, who emphasized how “key” expert evidence is in all standard-essential patent (SEP) and ICT patent cases in Brazil. Expert evidence has been requested in an average of 95% of SEP cases and 98% of ICT patent cases, data presented behind him showed.
He also noted the large impact this has had on the country from a global perspective:
“It has helped place Brazil on the map of jurisdictions where SEP owners choose to file their disputes.”
Mr. Licks added that a decade ago, these patentees would never have considered Brazil. But it is thanks to the speed of the judicial system, the reliability of the law, and the expert evidence it is now leaning on that has led to the Brazil of today, he noted. And the mix of attorneys, in-house counsel, and judges present in the seminar today reinforces that progress, he said.
Following Mr. Licks was Federal Appellate Judge Aluisio Gonçalves de Castro Mendes of the Federal Regional Court of the 2nd Circuit. He too underlined the importance of expert evidence in cases – and went over the transformation that the judiciary system has undergone in Brazil to get to the level it is at today. Now, experts can register online through a portal managed by each of the individual State Courts of Justice.
But expert evidence cannot be taken for granted, Judge Mendes noted. It is a recurring problem—especially in patent cases—that judges themselves will not have the technical knowledge needed to properly oversee a case. The variety of topics that these judges will see can range from surfboards to real estate, though, and a lack of specialization can have a high cost on the final outcome.
In a case Judge Mendes handled in real estate a few years ago, he found a minor mistake in the addition of data, which meant the value of monthly rent for the party involved was lowered by over 2 million Brazilian Real per month. “An absurd difference,” he said, “just because the expert had not been questioned.”
It’s not enough to have an expert; results must be reviewed, and data must be challenged, according to the judge. And when it comes to issuing preliminary injunctions (PIs) in patent infringement cases, the stakes get even higher, Judge Mendes emphasized.
Brazil a “counterweight” to other jurisdictions: Huawei executive
Huawei has had a presence in Brazil since the late 1990s and today is a widely recognized brand among the Brazilian public. In 2025, the Chinese company overtook the U.S.’s Qualcomm to become the leading foreign filer of Brazilian patent applications (May 27, 2026 ip fray article).
In a fireside chat with Licks Attorneys’ Felipe Oquendo, Huawei’s head of IP for Latin America, David Ding, shared more on why it has increased its focus on Brazil in recent years.
While he was lightly critical of the country’s speed in terms of patent prosecution, Mr. Ding was positive when it came to the litigation environment.
Rio’s specialized courts have now accumulated about two decades’ experience adjudicating high-tech patent cases, including those concerning SEPs, he said.
In particular, he praised the timely availability of injunctive relief, as well as the Brazilian courts’ use of technical experts.
“That is a counterweight to the other industrialized countries,” Mr. Ding said. “It is quicker than Europe, China, the U.S., so that is why Brazil right now tends to be a spot where a licensor likes to take advantage of PIs to facilitate a global license agreement.”
The size of the Brazilian market itself, and its role as a logistics hub for the wider region, also contribute to its importance for licensors.
“A lot of stuff stops here and is distributed to the rest of the Latin American markets, so the leverage here is big”, Mr. Ding added.
Perhaps above all, it is the Brazilian courts’ “clear attitude” towards the question of infringement that proves most attractive to leading licensors like Huawei, he suggested.
While other jurisdictions have adopted different approaches such as attempting to set global rates, to determine (F)RAND terms, or to grant interim licenses, Brazilian judges “are just purely focused on whether you are infringed or not infringed”, Mr. Ding said.
“And if you infringe, you need to get a license. If you don’t have a license, it is illegal. That is what we are looking for; that is why we choose here to [pursue] litigation to facilitate global licenses.”
Define, observe, correlate
The next panel featured academics from a range of universities, including Professor Lisandro Lovisolo of the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Professor Renato Lopes of Inova Unicamp, and Professor Luciano Agostini of the Universidade Federal de Pelotas, who discussed the challenges, methodologies, and best practices of expert evidence in ICT litigation.
The panel was moderated by Rodolfo Barreto of Licks Attorneys, who noted the substantial increase in work his firm has seen in recent years, as well as the change in the importance of expert evidence in litigation – especially, he said, since Appellate Judge Maria Cristina de Brito Lima gave her landmark ruling in December 2023. Ahead of a hearing that was due to place over an injunction, she held that an expert would have to be consulted on the injunction because she had to ensure that no violation was taking place. This was, and has continued to be, replicated in cases to date by the judges who have since filled her spot.
In many cases now, expert evidence is now the first act that judges will undertake in a case. And they will now participate and push back on the evidence presented before them.
Mr. Barreto asked the panelists about some of the biggest challenges in presenting expert evidence in ICT litigation. Most of them agreed that it is when an expert will act like a third party and, following the opinions given by the plaintiffs and defendants, they too will give their own opinion.
“But you can’t challenge an opinion,” Mr. Lovisolo said.
Another main issue that the three agreed upon was analysing something as complex as a tool being used inside of video streaming – such as the placement of ads, or a specific function within a movie. While it may be known that a certain technology is being implemented, it cannot be demonstrated with the degree of detail necessary.
So how do you overcome this?
According to Ocean Tomo’s Managing Director Sam Wiley, who followed the panel with his own presentation on technical proof in ICT litigation, to show that a system performs a method, you have to:
- Define the problem: specify what must be proven;
- Observe: trace the application, synchronize the logs, sensors, and counters; repeat with options enabled and disabled to understand how the system works; and
- Correlate: map evidence to the claim.
Much like the rest of the speakers attending today, Mr. Wiley commented on the way Brazil might currently be the most important venue for SEP litigation.
Brazil has and is currently seeing some of the biggest SEP fights, in both the telecoms industry, and in video codecs, including Dolby v. Snap (June 10, 2026 ip fray article), NEC v. HMD (August 12, 2026 ip fray article), Panasonic v. HMD (July 17, 2026 ip fray article), and InterDigital v. Hisense (July 16, 2026 ip fray article).
Mr. Wiley also went through complex examples of how to prove a technology was being used, including firmware extraction and source code, battery materials, and video streaming traffic. The latter was of particular importance to the audience, given the myriad of video codec disputes currently taking place in Brazil. Recently, a court-appointed expert found in IBEX v. Disney that the latter’s HEVC encoders infringe the plaintiff’s patent but ruled it non-essential (August 7, 2026 ip fray article).
Nokia: 90% of licenses agreed without litigation
An afternoon panel moderated by Licks Attorneys’ Carlos Aboim explored the interplay between SEPs, competition, and innovation.
Nokia’s Latin America Litigation Counsel, Victoria Garcia, argued the case that standards and the patents that underpin them promote a healthy marketplace, despite the intuitions some may have to the contrary.
“If this environment didn’t exist, we would be forced to buy products and services from ecosystems that are vertically different, which would not benefit consumers,” she said.
Ms. Garcia cited the example of USB-C chargers for mobile devices. “With this standard, we can travel with just one charger that can be used with all our electronic devices, which reduces waste and reduces costs,” she said.
“Standards are good for the market, and good for consumers. They reduce the barrier to entry both for consumers and for… small companies” looking to compete, she added.
Using the courts to enforce SEPs has often been painted as an “anti-competitive” practice by some stakeholders. But Ms. Garcia said that Nokia only relies on litigation as a last resort.
“If you stop and think about it, often it is the patent holder that has the unfavorable position, as the implementer uses their technology [without paying for it] and then sits at the [negotiating] table while continuing to use it,” she suggested.
“Unfortunately, sometimes we have to go to court, but thank goodness, this is the exception”, she said, adding that around 90% of Nokia’s license agreements are finalized without litigation.
Rio de Janeiro State Court’s 94% preliminary injunction grant rate
In the closing keynote, Judge de Brito Lima, of the Ninth Chamber of Public Law at the Rio de Janeiro State Court of Justice, sought to shed some light on how Brazil’s competent courts have evolved in their approach to handling patent cases.
With her court handling bankruptcy, M&A, and a host of other business-related legal matters other than just IP, Judge de Brito Lima reiterated the importance of court-appointed technical experts in patent litigation.
“As a judge, what we must do is follow the actual legislation and regulations; we have the experts to help us understand [technical] matters”, she explained.
However, “we receive a technical report, but it is our responsibility to interpret that”, she continued. “It is not just a case of reading it [and accepting the experts’ opinions], but evaluating what is OK and what is not OK in that report” from a legal perspective.
Sharing some statistics from her own courtroom, Judge de Brito Lima said that 26 expert reports had been produced since patent cases began to be heard there in 2012. Twenty-one of those (almost 81%) found infringement.
She revealed that, of the 96 patent cases heard since 2012, 68 had concluded (almost 71%); and of those, 67 (99%) ended with a settlement.
Further underlining the attractiveness of Brazil for patent plaintiffs, of the 51 cases in which a preliminary injunction was requested, 49 (94%) were granted; and from 2017 the average time from the start of litigation to a settlement or judgment was nine months and seven days.