Context: Before ZTE brought any standard-essential patent (SEP) infringement action against Samsung, the latter fired the first shot by bringing a FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) action in the UK, followed by a SEP-related antitrust case in Frankfurt, Germany as well as a U.S. antitrust and contract lawsuit (March 3, 2025 ip fray article).
What’s new: Two Samsung v. ZTE patent infringement lawsuits have become discoverable in the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) Mannheim Local Division (LD). The filings were made on February 28. ZTE brought its own cases in the UPC, and now Samsung is countersuing over a couple of its own wireless patents.
Direct impact: Samsung’s exposure to ZTE’s patents, especially in the European market, is far greater than the other way round. When all is said and done, ZTE will be the net licensor and Samsung the net licensee. By bringing countersuits, Samsung may hope to put some settlement pressure on ZTE, and it may argue that any FRAND-related decision between the two companies has to take into consideration that the outcome will be a cross-license rather than a one-way street.
Wider ramifications: Samsung only countersues, though in this case the UK FRAND action was launched as a pre-emptive strike. It asserted SEPs against Apple in multiple countries in the early 2010s. Those cases basically went nowhere. For example, none of the patents asserted in Germany (all of them in the Mannheim Regional Court) was deemed infringed. What did happen, though, was that the United States Department of Justice and the European Commission investigated Samsung over suspected SEP abuse. In the mid 2010s, Samsung countersued Huawei, but those cases did not come to judgment before the parties settled.
These are the two patents-in-suit in the UPC Mannheim cases:
- EP4050804 (“Method and apparatus for channel encoding and decoding in communication or broadcasting system”)
- asserted against ZTE’s French, German and Dutch subsidiaries
- counsel of record: Rospatt’s Thomas Musmann
- EP4096288 (“Method and apparatus for managing data communication in wireless communication network”)
- asserted against ZTE’s French, German, Dutch, Italian, Austrian, Bulgarian and Romanian subsidiaries
- counsel of record: Rospatt’s Hetti Hilge (who was part of Samsung’s teams in the cases against Apple in the early 2010s, and became a partner of the firm a few years later)
In its defensive UPC cases against ZTE, Samsung is being represented by A&O Shearman’s Dr. Jan Ebersohl.
Panel: Presiding Judge Professor Peter Tochtermann, Judge Dirk Boettcher (“Böttcher” in German) and Judge Carine Gillet (Paris, France).