Context: Bilaterally and through a pool, Huawei has concluded many license agreements covering its WiFi 6 standard-essential patents (SEPs). Its disputes with Amazon (March 5, 2024 ip fray article) and German router market leader AVM (April 5, 2024 ip fray article) were settled in the spring. A court ruling indicated that Huawei had more than complied with its FRAND licensing obligations (March 19, 2024 ip fray article). But router maker Netgear continues to invest heavily in litigation, including a case it brought in the Central District of California (June 20, 2024 ip fray article).
What’s new: A spokeswoman for the Munich I Regional Court recently confirmed the pendency of a Huawei v. Netgear complaint that was amended, thereby resulting in two cases that have not previously been reported. In case no. 21 O 5901/24, Huawei is asserting EP3937445 (“method for transmitting he-lft sequence and apparatus”). That case resulted from an order to sever that patent assertion from case no. 7 O 4995/24 over EP3334112 from the same family. Meanwhile, an interim conference will be held by the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) Munich Local Division (LD) in a UPC case over another WiFi 6 SEP, EP3611989 on a “method and apparatus for transmitting wireless local area network information.” And in the Central District of California, a hearing on Huawei’s motions to strike some parts and dismiss some others has been postponed from October 4 to October 11 at Netgear’s request based on a scheduling conflict.
Direct impact: The UPC decision, with the trial originally scheduled for June and then pushed back to late October, has the potential to end the dispute. At least one SEP litigation taking place (not exclusively, but also) in the UPC has recently been settled (August 14, 2024 ip fray article). Also, the Munich I Regional Court will hold a trial in the above-mentioned EP’112 action on December 19, 2024, and Huawei prevailed over that one against Amazon. A nullity trial over another patent-in-suit (EP3337077 on a “wireless local area network information transmission method and apparatus) will take place in the Federal Patent Court of Germany on December 12, 2024, and the related Dusseldorf infringement case might then be resumed. There could be several decisions in 2025, all in all.
Wider ramifications: It is widely known in the industry that Huawei and Qualcomm were the two leading contributors to the WiFi 6 standard. Furthermore, Huawei is a major implementer of standards and known to take moderate positions on royalty rates compared to companies whose patent licensing income far exceeds their licensing costs, much less non-practicing entities for whom licensing is a one-way street. None of that guarantees that all implementers will jump to take a license, and Netgear appears to be the hardest target Huawei has faced so far, at least with respect to WiFi 6.
UPC interim conferences are typically held by video conference, with the general public not being able to dial in but having access to a live transmission at the courthouse. That also applies to the August 29, 2024 interim conference in Huawei v. Netgear (Munich LD).
By bringing a FRAND action in U.S. district court, Netgear displays a lack of confidence in the UPC as well as the Munich I and Dusseldorf Regional Courts. Depending on what measures Netgear seeks in the U.S. to undermine European/German patent rights, the net effect could be that it will be deemed an unwilling licensee.
Netgear also faces the risk of Huawei being able to present to the UPC as well as German national courts a variety of comparable license agreements that validate its WiFi 6 royalty rate. In that case, the European Commission’s disagreement with the German Sisvel v. Haier doctrine (August 4, 2024 ip fray article) won’t matter: the courts would then inevitably reach the question of whether Netgear is a willing licensee.
Based on what ip fray has been able to research so far, these are exact or estimated dates of forthcoming key events in the dispute:
- August 29, 2024: UPC interim conference
- October 11, 2024: U.S. motion hearing (motions to strike and dismiss)
- October 30 & 31, 2024: UPC trial
- December 12, 2024: Federal Patent Court (Germany) nullity hearing over EP ‘077 (case no. 2 Ni 21/22), over which the Dusseldorf Regional Court stayed an infringement case; oral decision typically at end of hearing, written decision a few months later; if that patent is upheld (be it in its original or an amended form), the infringement proceedings will continue with a retrial likely to take place in mid-2025 more or less.
- December 19, 2024: Munich I Regional Court (7th Civil Chamber; Presiding Judge Dr. Oliver Schoen) trial over EP’112, on which Huawei prevailed over Amazon
- late December 2024 or early January 2025: Munich I Regional Court judgment over EP’112
- March 6 & 27, 2025: Dusseldorf Higher Regional Court appellate hearing over EP3143741 on a “method and transmitter for orthogonal frequency division multiple access (ofdma) resource allocation”; the lower Dusseldorf court held this one not infringed; the Federal Patent Court upheld it in an amended form (March 20, 2024)
- Trial date unknown, but probably early 2025: a second UPC action (link to case registry) over EP3678321 on a “resource scheduling method, apparatus, and device.”
- Trial date unknown, but most likely sometime in 2025: Munich I Regional Court trial over EP’445 (21st Civil Chamber; Presiding Judge Dr. Georg Werner).