Context: HMD recently withdrew its EU antitrust complaint against VoiceAge EVS (May 5, 2025 ip fray article) and previously appealed a German VoiceAge EVS v. HMD appellate ruling to the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) (March 29, 2025 ip fray article). VoiceAge EVS has won a number of standard-essential patent (SEP) cases against HMD, not only in Germany but also in Brazil.
What’s new: We have learned that on June 19, 2025, a Chinese court in Fuzhou (Fujian Province) granted VoiceAge EVS two SEP injunctions against HMD Global Oy. The case numbers of the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court are (2023) MIN 01 MIN CHU No.311 and (2023) MIN 01 MIN CHU No.312. All 67 accused Nokia-branded mobile phones were found to practice the EVS standard, and the patents-in-suit read on the relevant 3GPP specification. HMD’s FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) defense failed because its breach of its FRAND licensing obligations caused the failure of the licensing negotiations.
Direct impact: The injunctions are conditional (somewhat comparable to UK SEP injunctions). HMD was given two months from the effective date of the two decisions to conclude a license agreement. Failing that, HMD will have to cease the manufacturing and the sale of the 67 accused products in China. However, if HMD appeals the case to the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) by July 28, 2025, the injunctions will not take immediate effect but, affirmance provided, in about a year from now. HMD does manufacture in China, apparently through a Foxconn subsidiary, but also has manufacturing capacities in India, Vietnam and possibly other places.
Wider ramifications: These are not the first Chinese SEP injunctions as companies such as Sony and Samsung have previously been enjoined. But in the current geopolitical climate, they are particularly interesting. The European Commission (EC) accused China of weakening SEP enforcement (April 23, 2025 ip fray article), but in this case, it is actually a European company (HMD is based in Finland) that has been held by a Chinese court to infringe valid SEPs and to have failed to act in compliance with FRAND.
Theoretically, if HMD neither takes a license nor files an appeal, the injunctions will enter into force on August 28, 2025. While no one should hold their breath for HMD taking a license at this stage, it appears unlikely that HMD would let the Chinese injunctions take effect without an appeal.
In the meantime, VoiceAge EVS’s Chinese wins are inconducive to HMD’s FRAND reputation not only in the German part of the dispute with VoiceAge EVS but also with a view to other pending matters, such as cases brought in Europe by Huawei, Orange and Navigate (over a Dolby patent) (May 22, 2025 ip fray article). Notably, Huawei and Orange are not only SEP holders but also large-scale implementers of SEPs, so those companies can’t possibly be interested in excessive SEP royalty levels.
SEP enforcement is a more global game than ever, with Pantech similarly recently having won a Japanese SEP injunction against Google (June 30, 2025 ip fray article).
As a matter of editorial policy, ip fray consistently declines to engage in “China bashing” (such as by quoting “experts” with anti-Chinese rhetoric), given that various Chinese companies are world-class innovators, making it implausible that China as a country would have a one-dimensional agenda of devaluing patents of any kind.