{"id":749,"date":"2024-07-25T14:52:25","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T14:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/?p=749"},"modified":"2024-07-25T14:52:25","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T14:52:25","slug":"asustek-affiliate-suing-lenovo-in-upc-as-well-as-munich-i-regional-court-september-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/asustek-affiliate-suing-lenovo-in-upc-as-well-as-munich-i-regional-court-september-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"ASUSTeK affiliate suing Lenovo in UPC as well as Munich I Regional Court: September trial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

Context:<\/strong> In late 2023, Lenovo filed patent infringement complaints against rival PC maker ASUSTeK in the United States International Trade Commission (USITC or ITC) (December 15, 2023 ITC notice of institution of investigation<\/a>) and a U.S. district court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s new:<\/strong> This month, the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) case registry revealed an infringement complaint by Innovative Sonic Corporation against Lenovo over a 5G standard-essential patent (SEP), the inventor of which is an ASUSTeK employee (mid-July 2024 LinkedIn post by ip fray<\/strong><\/a>). It is a safe assumption that Innovative Sonic v. Lenovo<\/em> is indirectly a countersuit by ASUSTeK, or on ASUSTeK’s behalf. In addition, ip fray<\/strong> has been informed by the Munich I Regional Court of pending lawsuits over another ISL wireless patent (again invented by an ASUSTeK employee) against Lenovo and its Motorola Mobility subsidiary, with a trial scheduled for September 18, 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Direct impact:<\/strong> Lenovo now faces the risk of ASUSTeK, through ISL, getting leverage in the German market long before a potential U.S. import ban would enter into force. But with InterDigital’s ongoing SEP enforcement against Lenovo in Germany (July 17, 2024 ip fray<\/strong> article<\/a>), it’s possible that Lenovo and Motorola Mobility will temporarily withdraw their smartphones and other products with cellular connectivity from the German market anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wider ramifications:<\/strong> It appears that ASUSTeK is trying to gain leverage from SEPs over a company that sued over non-SEPs. That is also what Motorola Mobility (while it was an independent company and after its acquisition by Google, but prior to being sold to Lenovo) tried against Apple and Microsoft in the early 2010s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

In the UPC, Innovative Sonic is suing the following entities: Lenovo International Co\u00f6peratief U.A., Lenovo France SAS, Lenovo (Italy) S.R.L., Digital River Ireland Ltd, Lenovo (Deutschland) GmbH, Motorola Mobility France SAS, Motorola Mobility LLC Motorola Mobility International Sales LLC and Motorola Mobility Germany GmbH.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The patent-in-suit is EP2765731<\/a> (“methods and apparatus of small cell enhancement in a wireless communication system”). The UPC case is pending before the Dusseldorf Local Division (panel: Presiding Judge <\/a>Ronny Thomas<\/a>, Judge Dr. B\u00e9r\u00e9nice Thom<\/a> and Judge <\/a>Andr\u00e1s Kupecz<\/a>). The plaintiff is represented by Wildanger’s Dr. Alexander Reetz<\/a>, and the defendants by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s Dr. Nina Bayerl<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today a spokeswoman for the Munich I Regional Court confirmed the pendency of a pair of related cases: Innovative Sonic is suing Motorola Mobility (21 O 8159\/23) and its parent company Lenovo (21 O 8160\/23) over EP2802185<\/a> (“Method and Apparatus for Adding Serving Cells in a Wireless Communication System”). The court furthermore confirmed that the trial will be held on September 18, 2024. That makes a decision in October very likely. The matter is before the 21st Civil Chamber (Presiding Judge: Dr. Georg Werner).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The case numbers indicate that the complaint was filed last year, while the UPC action has a formal filing date of June 28, 2024. Apparently ASUSTeK decided to launch another enforcement action that still has pretty good chances of being adjudicated before Lenovo can actually enforce a U.S. import ban (should it obtain one).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lenovo is normally a very defensive patent owner. But competition between Lenovo and ASUSTeK in the global Windows PC market is fierce, and that’s why Lenovo apparently decided last year to assert patents on what might be differentiating features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About two months earlier, ASUSTeK took the initiative to sue Samsung over wireless patents (September 15, 2023 articly by DigiTimes<\/a>). But ASUSTeK, too, finds itself on the receiving end of patent assertions more often than it enforces its own intellectual property rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Innovative Sonic Limited is suing Lenovo in the UPC as well as the Munich I Regional Court over ASUSTeK patents.<\/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":[117,78,73,86,131,28,12,14,15,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asustek","category-germany","category-jurisdictions","category-lenovo","category-lenovo-v-asustek","category-l-icensors-licensees","category-patent-litigation","category-patents","category-standard-essential-patents","category-unified-patent-court"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","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=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":751,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions\/751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}