Nokia used to be the pride of Europe in its field, but it failed (as the saying goes, the higher you climb, the harder you fall), and a result, its patents have become not the, but certainly a scourge of Europe.
In October I discovered a German Conversant v. Daimler lawsuit because it was mentioned in a U.S. court filing. Nokia gave Conversant a package of cellular standard-essential patents (SEPs)--a practice commonly referred to as "privateering" that anybody in Brussels trying to dissuade the European Commission from enforcing EU antitrust law against Nokia should be ashamed of.
By now, Conversant has brought at least three more cases in Munich (and maybe others in different fora):
The first one I became aware of is over EP2934050 on an "apparatus and method for providing a connection" and was filed on August 13, 2019. The original complaint (case no. 21 O 11384/19) merely sought an accounting of Daimler's sales of infringing products, but Conversant could add--and by now might have added--a request for injunctive relief anytime (the patent is set to expire in early 2021).
The case will go to trial on September 23, 2020 before the 21st Civil Chamber (Presiding Judge: Tobias Pichlmaier).
These are the three new cases and the hearing dates I'm aware of (I have yet to find out whether those are first hearings--as I believe--or already trials):
Case no. 21 (<= that's the number of the chamber, i.e., court division) O 17752/19 over EP3300421 on a "slow mac-e for autonomous transmission in high speed uplink packet access (hsupa) along with service specific transmission time control" (hearing date: November 25, 2020)
Case No. 21 O 17753/19 over EP3267722 on a "fixed hs-dsch or e-dch allocation for voip (hs-dsch without hs-scch/e-dch)" (hearing date: December 2, 2020)
Case no. 7 (= Presiding Judge Dr. Matthias Zigann's division) O 17751/19 over EP1797659 on a "slow mac-e for autonomous transmission in high speed uplink packet access (hsupa) along with service specific transmission time control" (hearing date: December 2, 2020)
This further escalation of the Avanci-Daimler dispute shows that the problem wouldn't go away even if Daimler felt forced to settle after a decision such as the one that may come down in Mannheim next month. The issues needs to be addressed. The European Commission has been waiting and waiting and waiting--but its hesitance has not helped in the slightest.
As I just mentioned Mannheim, I have meanwhile learned that Presiding Judge Dr. Peter Tochtermann of the Mannheim Regional Court's 7th Civil Chamber (Presiding Judge Dr. Holger Kircher's division is the 2nd Civil Chamber) held a trial on Friday in a non-automotive case, and from what I hear, that division still has the same perspective on FRAND as before, thereby declining to perform the same about-face as Judge Dr. Kircher's panel. Case law works has merely persuasive weight in Germany, so--unlike in Common Law jurisdictions--inconsistent decisions by the same court on the very same legal question would not be unheard of (no stare decisis doctrine). While I'm unaware of a high-profile question of patent law that would have been decided differently by judges of the same German court, I have read about cases in other fields of law. In one such case, the owners of different condominiums in the very same building in the Northern Bavarian city of Nuremberg brought lawsuits over the very same issue (no difference in facts or law), and one judge found for a plaintiff while another judge did the opposite.
It will be interesting to watch how this SEP injunction issue settles out before the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court, provided that an appeal is brought and adjudicated prior to a poor mistreated defendant feeling forced to cave.
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