Philips and Vivo settle five-year Indian 3G, 4G SEP dispute

Context: In 2020, Philips sued vivo in the Delhi High Court over several of its 3G, HSPA, HSPA+, and 4G/LTE standard-essential patents (SEPs). The plaintiff alleged that vivo had implemented its technologies in several of its devices without proper licensing. But, in its defence, vivo argued that the technologies it was using were contained inside chipsets that Qualcomm and MediaTek were supplying the company. Any licensing obligations would therefore be the chipset manufacturers’ responsibility, it alleged at the time.

What’s new: Philips and vivo have struck a patent licensing deal, putting an end to their five-year SEP dispute in India (April 9, 2025 Delhi High Court order (PDF)).

Direct impact: As of now, there is no publicly known SEP litigation against vivo, making this deal a significant win for the Chinese handset maker.

Wider ramifications: This settlement comes around 15 months after Philips reached a settlement with OPPO (January 16, 2024 ip fray article) involving the same patents. Often, in the past, when OPPO and vivo were sued by the same SEP holder, the settlements would come in short succession of each other – making this case a notable outlier. For example, Nokia settled its case against OPPO with a global patent cross-licensing deal in January 2024 (January 24, 2024 ip fray article), and less than two weeks later, the Finnish SEP giant signed a 5G cross-licensing agreement with vivo to end their parallel two-year dispute (February 5, 2024 ip fray article). The same occurred with ZTE’s parallel SEP disputes against OPPO and vivo. In March 2024, the Chinese SEP owner signed a global cross-license agreement with vivo (and Amazon), and sure enough, five months later, it was reported that a two-year-long patent standoff between ZTE and OPPO had also reached a “quiet conclusion”.