{"id":514,"date":"2024-05-23T10:37:36","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T10:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/?p=514"},"modified":"2024-05-23T10:37:36","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T10:37:36","slug":"lenovo-loses-uk-preliminary-injunction-bid-against-ericsson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/lenovo-loses-uk-preliminary-injunction-bid-against-ericsson\/","title":{"rendered":"Lenovo loses UK preliminary injunction bid against Ericsson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Context:<\/strong> Yesterday, Mrs Justice Kelyn Bacon of the High Court of Justice for England & Wales held a hearing on Lenovo’s request for a preliminary injunction (PI) against Ericsson (for the details of the case, see<\/em> this May 22, 2024 ip fray<\/strong> article<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s new:<\/strong> Mrs Justice Bacon has just announced in open court her decision to deny<\/em><\/strong> Lenovo’s PI bid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Direct impact:<\/strong> Lenovo can appeal this decision, but its PI request is outlandish, making it even less likely that the Court of Appeal will reach a conclusion more favorable to Lenovo’s interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wider ramifications:<\/strong> This sensible decision shows that even relatively new High Court judges are not easily persuaded of attempts by implementers of standards to make new law in the UK. Meanwhile, a similarly extreme case related to standard-essential patents (SEPs) is being heard by another High Court judge, Mr Justice Timothy Fancourt: Tesla v. InterDigital & Avanci<\/em> (January 3, 2024 ip fray<\/strong> article<\/a>). ip fray<\/strong> is following the hearing on the defendants’ jurisdictional challenges.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

After obtaining a favorable worldwide FRAND ruling from the High Court against InterDigital last year, it tried to make the UK the jurisdiction in which the entire dispute with Ericsson would be resolved (May 5, 2024 ip fray<\/strong> article<\/a>). After today’s decision, that is going to be much harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs Justice Bacon noted that the application for the injunction sought was crafted “in unusual terms.” That is a euphemism for “insane” in this case. In that part of the discussion of the case, Mrs Justice Bacon noted that what Lenovo really wanted was not that the alleged infringement of a patent in the UK would stop, but that Ericsson would withdraw its PIs in Brazil and Colombia. Mrs Justice Bacon noted that one might have thought Lenovo would have sought an antisuit injunction for that purpose. But no. Lenovo instead tried to “obtain antisuit relief by the backdoor.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also telling that the hearing lasted only one day and the decision came down so shortly thereafter. It was pretty much a no-brainer to throw out the PI motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That does not mean to say that Mrs Justice Bacon did not hear, and to some extent accept, Lenovo’s arguments. She very much acknowledged that Ericsson’s ongoing enforcement of PIs in Brazil and Colombia does exert commercial pressure. But the Latin American cases were brought before Lenovo’s SEP-in-suit was even granted, and at any rate, the problems that Lenovo has in Brazil and Colombia are not due to Ericsson’s alleged infringement of Lenovo’s SEP-in-suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs Justice Bacon noted that what Lenovo is seeking has actually nothing to do with its rights as a patent holder. It’s about what Ericsson is doing with its patents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no connection between the alleged infringement of a patent in the UK and the losses suffered in Brazil and Colombia. The alleged infringement is not a proximate cause of the harm that Lenovo claims to be suffering in Latin America. Mrs Justice Bacon declines the invitation to let Lenovo force Ericsson to “conduct itself differently” in foreign jurisdictions only because Lenovo asserts that one of its patents is being infringed in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs Justice Bacon deserves credit and respect for having been extremely fair and balanced. She clearly looked at the matter from all angles, but determined that Lenovo had no case, and therefore threw out the motion as Lenovo failed to meet the American Cyanamid<\/em> criteria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This outcome and the underlying rationale are consistent with what ip fray<\/strong> observed and predicted on LinkedIn yesterday. About 20 minutes into the hearing, ip fray<\/strong> wrote on LinkedIn<\/a> that Lenovo was “facing a highly skeptical judge.” After the hearing concluded, ip fray<\/strong> wrote on LinkedIn<\/a>: “[T]he prediction here is still that the motion will be denied.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mrs Justice Bacon of the High Court of Justice for England & Wales declined to grant Lenovo antisuit relief against Ericsson’s Brazilian and Colombian preliminary injunctions “by the backdoor.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,13,86,28,12,14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ericsson","category-ericsson-v-lenovo","category-lenovo","category-l-icensors-licensees","category-patent-litigation","category-patents","category-standard-essential-patents"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":515,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}