UK court denies Lenovo interim license in Ericsson dispute

Context: After approximately a year of litigation, the dispute between Ericsson and Lenovo is now at a stage where decisions are coming down in short succession. Last month, the United States Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit revived Lenovo’s antisuiti injunction bid (October 24, 2024 ip fray article). last week, Lenovo avoided a U.S: import ban over two non-standard-essential patents (non-SEPs) (November 16, 2024 ip fray article).

 

What’s new: Today, Mr Justice Jonathan Richards of the High Court of Justice for England & Wales (EWHC) denied Lenovo’s request for a declaration that it is entitled to an interim license from Ericsson (November 19, 2024 judgment). In particular, the judge was unconvinced of Ericsson seeking injunctions in bad faith, given that a neutral third party – the U.S. International Trade Commission’s (USITC, or just ITC) Office of Unfair Important Investigations (OUII, or “ITC Staff”) – deems Ericsson to have discharged its FRAND licensing obligation while raising concerns over Lenovo’s demands for a license to its own patents. Mr Justice Richards distinguished the facts in this case from the Xiaomi-Panasonic situation (October 3, 2024 ip fray article).

 

Direct impact: The decision is appealable. Xiaomi also lost in the High Court, but prevailed on appeal. However, the two cases are far apart.

 

Wider ramifications: To a certain extent, the lack of clarity in today’s decision about the test for an entitlement to an interim-license declaration validates the concerns voiced by SEP licensors and their lawyers about whether UK interim licenses would become antisuit injunctions by any other name. While the outcome obviously shows that not every implementer is now going to obtain an interim-license declaration, the reasoning leaves room for interim license-declarations in far more cases than the outlier that was Panasonic v. Xiaomi. But given the high likelihood of an appeal (unless the parties settle in the near term), today’s ruling may not be influential for a long time.