Context: More than two years ago, Finnish smartphone maker HMD, which licensed the Nokia smartphone brand and is partly owned by Qualcomm and Google, lodged an antitrust complaint with the European Commission’s (EC) Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP) over the way VoiceAge EVS enforces its standard-essential patents (SEPs) relating to the Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) standard., a 4G/LTE substandard (December 1, 2022 press release by HMD). The EC never announced the launch of formal investigations of VoiceAge EVS’s conduct. What the EC did separately from the question of an alleged abuse of a dominant market position was to file an amicus curiae brief with the Oberlandesgericht München (Munich Higher Regional Court) in a VoiceAge EVS v. HMD case, generally (without taking a position on that matter) advocating a different legal standard than the German Sisvel v. Haier jurisprudence on how (not) to apply the guidance the European Court of Justice provided in Huawei v. ZTE (August 4, 2024 ip fray article). In recent years, virtually no implementer of a standard has prevailed on a FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) defense in Germany.
What’s new:
- A Commission spokesperson has confirmed to ip fray “that HMD withdrew its complaint against VoiceAge.”
- ip fray has obtained the public redacted version of a 2021 ruling in a related Mannheim case where the Landgericht Mannheim (Mannheim Regional Court) deemed VoiceAge EVS’s conduct FRAND-compliant.
- Last Wedesday, the Landgericht München I (Munich I Regional Court) granted VoiceAge EVS an injunction against OPPO.
- The next day, VoiceAge EVS filed a patent infringement complaint against OPPO affiliate OnePlus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
Direct impact:
- When an EU antitrust complaint does not lead to formal investigations over the course of almost 30 months, it is highly unlikely (except in rare cases like Spotify’s complaint over Apple’s App Store terms) that DG COMP will ever formally investigate. HMD presumably withdrew because the complaint was about to be rejected.
- The Mannheim judgment suggests that regardless of how one views the EC’s overarching concerns regarding German SEP case law, VoiceAge EVS may have a defensible position because of a variety of comparable license deals.
- OPPO left the German market in 2022 after Nokia won a few patent injunctions, but it has meanwhile settled that dispute and several others (such as with InterDigital, Philips and Panasonic). The question is if and when OPPO intends to return to Germany.
- OPPO affiliate OnePlus has a foothold in the U.S. market and is now facing the risk of a Texas-size damages award.
Wider ramifications: It remains to be seen whether the EC will take an active role in HMD’s appeal of the Munich decision to the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) (March 29, 2025 ip fray article), where HMD has until June 25 to file its opening brief on appeal. The EC and HMD asked the Munich appeals court for a referral to the ECJ, but a court that is not one of final appeal enjoys unlimited discretion in that regard. It did, however, exercise its discretion to grant leave for a final appeal within the German court system.
1. Withdrawal of HMD’s EU antitrust complaint
EU antitrust complaints over alleged SEP abuse have generally been unsuccessful, though they can make an impact even if they do no formally lead to a finding of misconduct. When Nokia was a net licensee, it complained over, but at some point settled with, Qualcomm. Apple and Microsoft had FRAND issues with Motorola and (only Apple) with Samsung in the early 2010s. DG COMP put enough pressure on Samsung that it dropped all its injunction requests Europe-wide. But in the end, also in light of Huawei v. ZTE, there were no further consequences. In 2019, Daimler (now named Mercedes) and some of its suppliers complained over Nokia’s SEP licensing practices in the automotive supply chain, and nothing came out of that other than the EC urging all parties to engage in mediation (which failed to bring about a settlement, so in the end it was just a waste of resources).
After almost two years and a half, HMD must have realized, or may have been advised by the EC, that the complaint was not going anywhere. The EC’s best practices suggest a decision within about a year. There are rare exceptions where full-blown investigations are launched later, but in those cases the complainants are probably encouraged to keep their complaint alive.
Without HMD’s complaint, it’s rather unlikely that DG COMP would have taken an initiative to submit an amicus curiae brief in that particular dispute. But a new competition commissioner is in charge now, and it remains to be seen what role (if any) the EC will play in the further German court proceedings.
For VoiceAge EVS it is definitely good news that the hypothetical risk of an antitrust fine (which could amount to up to 10% of worldwide revenues) has gone away.
2. Public redacted version of Mannheim judgment vindicates VoiceAge EVS
VoiceAge EVS can now claim that the withdrawal of HMD’s EU antitrust complaint, long after the EC’s best-practices window for launching formal investigations, vindicates its licensing terms and its litigation conduct. In case no. 7 O 116/19 over EP2707687 (“Transform-domain codebook in a celp coder and decoder”), the Mannheim Regional Court made, among others, the following determinations regarding HMD’s FRAND defense:
- “With regard to the ‘alternative’ license offer to be considered, [VoiceAge EVS] has fulfilled its explanation and information obligations.”
- “With the alternative license agreement offer last submitted to [HMD], the plaintiff also met the FRAND requirements in substantive terms.”
- “The license rate of [REDACTED] USD per unit (at the beginning of the term of the license agreement) made by [VoiceAge EVS] as the basis for its alternative offer of an ongoing royalty payment or a lump sum one-time payment is neither exploitative nor discriminatory.”
- “[VoiceAge EVS]’s request is not only not clearly and unambiguously non-FRAND, but must also be regarded as reasonable and non-discriminatory in view of an average licensee operating in the product market concerned here.”
- “Contrary to [HMD]’s opinion, the demand for a fixed per unit license is neither unreasonable nor discriminatory.”
- “The requested initial per unit license rate of [a] USD (according to [VoiceAge EVS]’s representation derived from a standard unit license fee of [b] USD, taking into account a discount for (still) early licensing) is not unreasonably high. A price abuse (Art. 102 para. 2 lit. a TFEU) cannot be established.”
- “It cannot be established that the initial royalty rate sought, which, as shown, is to be regarded as reasonable and non-discriminatory with a view to an average licensee, appears to be abusive towards [HMD] in any case, taking into account the specific licensing parameters.”
In its German SEP disputes, particularly with HMD (and also OPPO), VoiceAge EVS is represented by the Wildanger firm.
3. Munich I Regional Court grants VoiceAge EVS another SEP injunction against OPPO
Last Wednesday (April 30, 2025), the Munich I Regional Court’s 7th Civil Chamber (Presiding Judge: Dr. Oliver Schoen (“Schön” in German)) handed down its decision i case no. 7 O 10630/21, VoiceAge EVS ./. OPPO and OROPE further to an April 3, 2025 trial. OROPE is an OPPO subsidiary in charge of European distribution EP3132443 (“Methods, encoder and decoder for linear predictive encoding and decoding of sound signals upon transition between frames having different sampling rates”) was deemed infringed, and OPPO’s FRAND defense failed.
The Bundespatentgericht (Federal Patent Court) declared all challenged claims of that patent unpatentable (further to a nullity complaint by OPPO) on August 2, 2022, but VoiceAge EVS prevailed on appeal to the Federal Court of Justice. As a result, the patent came back with a vengeance and OPPO has been enjoined.
It is impossible to tell from the outside whether OPPO intends to re-enter the German market anytime soon. Despite having left that market in 2022 after a couple of Nokia injunctions, OPPO continues to be sued in Germany.
4. VoiceAge EVS sues OPPO affiliate OnePlus in the Eastern District of Texas
The U.S. market is almost impenetrable to Chinese smartphone brands, but OnePlus, an upmarket Android brand that belongs to the OPPO group, is an exception.
In order to up the settlement pressure on OPPO, VoiceAge EVS has now filed a U.S. patent infringement complaint against OnePlus in the Marshall Division (Judge Rodney Gilstrap’s division) of the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint was brought on May 1, 2025:
VoiceAge EVS is asserting six patents:
- U.S. Patent No. 7,693,710 (“Method and device for efficient frame erasure concealment in linear predictive based speech codecs”)
- U.S. Patent No. 8,401,843 (“Method and device for coding transition frames in speech signals”)
- U.S. Patent No. 8,990,073 (“Method and device for sound activity detection and sound signal classification”)
- U.S. Patent No. 8,825,475 (“Transform-domain codebook in a CELP coder and decoder”)
- U.S. Patent No. 9,852,741 (“Methods, encoder and decoder for linear predictive encoding and decoding of sound signals upon transition between frames having different sampling rates”)
- U.S. Patent No. 9,015,038 (“Coding generic audio signals at low bitrates and low delay”)
VoiceAge EVS is represented by Olson Stein’s David Stein, Miller Fair Henry‘s Andrea Fair and Garrett Parish, and Robins Kaplan’s Cyrus Morton, Benjamen Linden, Annie Huang and Miles Finn.