UK Supreme Court grants Tesla’s petition to appeal dismissal of Avanci-InterDigital FRAND pool rate case-Overseas News-Shenzhen deep trust patent Agency Co., LTD

News Updates

NEWS CENTER

Related News

There is currently no data available

Home

UK Supreme Court grants Tesla’s petition to appeal dismissal of Avanci-InterDigital FRAND pool rate case

Release Time：

2025-07-04

Context: Last year, Mr Justice [Timothy] Fancourt of the High Court of Justice for England & Wales (EWHC) showed some sympathy for Tesla’s desire to obtain a UK FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) determination against the entire Avanci 5G standard-essential patent (SEP) pool, but ultimately dismissed the complaint (July 18, 2024 ip fray article). Tesla appealed to the England & Wales Court of Appeal (EWCA), where Lord Justice (LJ) [Richard] Arnold sided with the company that made electric vehicles popular but got outvoted by his co-panelists (March 6, 2025 ip fray article). Tesla appealed further by petitioning the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) to hear the case (September 3, 2024 ip fray article).

What’s new: Within only a few days of the appointment of three judges to the panel deciding on the petition (Lord Briggs (who was on the five-judge panel that decided Unwired Planet v. Huawei), Lord Leggatt and Lord Burrows), the UKSC has surprisingly granted Tesla’s petition on four out of five grounds of appeal. Only the procedural fairness part cannot be pursued.

Direct impact: The odds still don’t favor Tesla, given that two courts ruled against it (even if it was a split decision in the EWCA and a High Court judge who was torn between what he’d have liked to do and what he could do). When top courts grant such petitions, it does not mean that they necessarily agree with the petitioner on the merits, but that they consider a legal question objectively important for legal and/or economic reasons. In this case, the panel has presumably not even had enough time to form much of an opinion on the merits.

Wider ramifications: No matter how this will end, having succeeded with this petition is a remarkable success for the Powell Gilbert firm. That firm represents SEP holders (such as ZTE in the dispute with Samsung) as well as implementers. Whether this case will contribute to the UK’s popularity as a FRAND jurisdiction among implementers remains to be seen. Just last week, there was debate over the UK’s role at the IP Dealmakers Forum Europe in London (June 26, 2025 ip fray article). Nokia’s chief litigation counsel attributed the motivaton of implementers to bring FRAND cases in the UK (despite the EWCA having substantially raised the royalty rates in InterDigital v. Lenovo and especially Optis v. Apple (May 1, 2025 ip fray article)) to a strategy that prioritizes delays over the risk of a high rate (LinkedIn post by ip fray).

These are the grounds of appeal with respect to which the UKSC will now reevaluate the jurisdictional ruling:

Ground 1 – Whether pool licences are arguably required to be FRAND: The majority was wrong to hold that Tesla has no real prospect of establishing at trial that a SEP owner’s obligation under the FRAND Commitment to offer a licence on FRAND terms applies to licences under that SEP offered via pools or platforms.

Ground 2 – Whether procedural fairness unarguably requires the joinder of all members of the Avanci 5G Platform: The majority was wrong to hold that Tesla has no real prospect of establishing at trial that declaratory relief can fairly and appropriately be granted against Avanci and InterDigital, without needing to join the other 5G Platform Members to the claim.

Ground 3 – Whether Tesla’s claim advances or embraces the possibility of a bilateral licence from InterDigital: The majority was wrong to hold that Tesla’s claim does not advance or embrace, in the alternative, that a FRAND licence of InterDigital’s SEPs may be a bilateral licence on terms to be determined by the Patents Court.

Ground 5 – Appropriate forum for the Licensing Claims: Fancourt J was wrong to express the view (obiter) that there was any objection on forum non conveniens grounds to the Licensing Claims proceeding in England.

The only ground of appeal to have been thrown out was the following:

Ground 4 – Procedural fairness to Tesla: The majority’s conclusion on the construction of the FRAND Commitment was procedurally unfair to Tesla.

It is always difficult to convince judges at that level of their colleagues below having been procedurally unfair.

In China, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) did not take issue with a lower court’s jurisdiction over a FRAND determination claim that TCL brought against Access Advance, but nothing happened because the parties settled (October 30, 2024 ip fray article). As we explained last year, the SPC decision was narrowly limited, focusing primarily on the question of which of two Chinese courts of first instance should hear the matter (September 3, 2024 ip fray article). Therefore, Tesla would become the first implementer in the world to get a court ruling on a pool rate.

Tesla is suing InterDigital as a sample Avanci licensor (out of many dozens) and the Avanci firm, which organizes the collective licensing platform but does not hold any patents of its own. The most important aspect is that Avanci merely provides an optional one-stop shop solution. The optional nature of its offer has been repeatedly demonstrated, most recently and impressively last month when OPPO (an Avanci 5G licensor) and Volkswagen (an Avanci 5G licensee) entered into a bilateral license agreement covering the very same OPPO patents VW had already licensed through Avanci (June 20, 2025 ip fray article). That optionality is likely to be one of Avanci’s strongest arguments in the UKSC against a forcible FRAND determination at an implementer’s request.