Almost all of the time, this blog merely reports and comments on key issues facing the technology industry, but doesn't create or constitute an issue in and of itself. FOSS Patents has been mentioned in some U.S. court filings over the years, and judges (mostly in Germany, but from what I hear also in other parts of the world) have sometimes made reference to FOSS Patents without naming it. But today was the first situation in which two parties (a plaintiff and an intervenor) traded accusations involving FOSS Patents in different ways.
Various suppliers are intervening on Daimler's behalf in today's Nokia v. Daimler standard-essential patent infringement trial in Munich (continuing in a sealed courtroom as I write these lines). One of them is Peiker Acustic (yes, without an "o" before the "u"), a subsidairy of French automotive supplier Valeo. Just like in an October 2019 early first hearing in another Nokia v. Daimler case pending before the Munich I Regional Court, Dr. Benjamin Schroeer ("Schröer" in German) of the Hogan Lovells firm made an impassioned argument for his client's entitlement to an exhaustive component-level SEP license.
One of Dr. Schroeer's points was that the suppliers intervening in this case were specifically targeted by Nokia, whose complaint names certain suppliers and seeks an injunction and other remedies only with respect to Daimler cars incorporating telematics control units (TCUs) from those particular suppliers. Peiker's counsel noted that Nokia not only excluded Harman (a Samsung subsidiary) from that list but even explicitly stated that Daimler cars incorporating TCUs made by Harman were not being targeted at this stage.
Dr. Schroeer took Nokia to task over this selective, discriminatory targeting of particular Daimler suppliers (as opposed to all of them). While Harman's exclusion would simply be legally required if Harman had an exhaustive component-level license to Nokia's SEPs, he said that Harman quite apparently doesn't have such a license. In this context, he pointed to the fact that a FOSS Patents report on ongoing EU antitrust mediation between Nokia and Daimler as well as various Daimler suppliers mentioned Harman as one of the suppliers negotiating with Nokia. It's true that I listed all participants in mediation that I was able to find out about, and Harman was one of them.
A few minutes later, Nokia's lead counsel, Arnold &, Ruess's Cordula Schumacher, accused Dr. Schroeer of having violated the non-disclosure agreement covering the mediation process by confirming in open court the accuracy of a fact leaked to this blog.
One of the limitations concerning German court proceedings is that there are no transcripts. Otherwise one could verify what exactly Dr. Schroeer said. I don't remember him affirmatively confirming the accuracy of anything I wrote. It might be that the way he expressed himself was ambiguous and could be interpreted as either just referencing what I had written or making it sound like the fact I reported on it deprived the information of protection under the NDA.
In any event, Dr. Schumacher asked the court to add a sentence about this to the official minutes. In that same situation, Nokia's director of European dispute resolution, Dr. Clemens-August Heusch, made a remark to the effect of accusing Dr. Schroeer of having been FOSS Patents' source on the mediation status in the first place. Dr. Schroeer demanded a retraction and an apology (and also asked for something being included in the official minutes). He firmly denied having been my source. Nokia's Dr. Heusch declined the court's invitation to comment.
I don't disclose my confidential sources, which is also why I don't deny that anyone has been a source (or validate or contradict denials). What I did indicate in the Nokia mediation context is that I obtained information from more than one source.
The fact that Harman participated in mediation while not being an intervenor in the Nokia v. Daimler infringement proceedings was interesting for sure, but the blog post in question contained far more sensitive information than that one. It appears overreaching to try to keep the names of the parties to an antitrust mediation (requested by the European Commission) confidential.
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