NIPC Law

A uthor a jay_suresh   Licence CC BY 2.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Meade)  Optis Cellular Technology LLC and others v Apple Retail UK Ltd and others [2021] EWHC 2564 (Pat) (27 Sep 2021) This was one of a number of trials between Optis Cellular Technologies LLC, Cellular Wireless Technologies LLC and Unwired Planet International Limited ("Optis") of the one part and Apple Retail UK Ltd, Apple Distribution International Ltd and Apple Inc ("Apple") on the other.  Optis has alleged that Apple's iPhone, iPad and other 3G and 4G devices infringe 8 of its standard-essential patents ("SEP") when implementing an  ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute ) standard.  The litigation addresses the following questions.  The first is whether certain patents that have been granted to Optis are essential for the implementation of the standard.  If they are, the second question is whether the p...

Jane Lambert FRAND stands for "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory". It refers to the terms upon which the owner of a patent for an invention that is essential to a standard ("standard essential patent" or "SEP") should license its use. In  Unwired Planet International Ltd v Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd and another [2017] EWHC 711 (Pat) (5 April 2017), the first and so far only case on FRAND in the United Kingdom, Mr Justice Birss explained what is meant by FRAND at para [83] of his judgment: "The point of FRAND in standard setting is fairly easy to understand. Standards exist so that different manufacturers can produce equipment which is interoperable with the result that the manufacturers compete with one another. So the phone makers compete in the market for phones and the public can select a phone from any supplier and be sure (for example) that if it is a 4G phone, it will work with any 4G network. As a society we want the b...