Litigation NPE uses Huawei patents to sue OPPO and Xiaomi-Industry News-Shenzhen deep trust patent Agency Co., LTD

News Updates

NEWS CENTER

Related News

There is currently no data available

Home

Litigation NPE uses Huawei patents to sue OPPO and Xiaomi

Release Time：

2022-08-31

According to reports, in the past year, EVS technology patents have suddenly become active in litigation. At the beginning of this month, Jiwei.com reported the news that OPPO successfully invalidated the VoiceAge EVS patent. Recently, another litigation-type NPE operating EVS patent has gradually attracted the attention of the industry - Super Clear Codec Co., Ltd., whose English name is Crystal Clear Codec (referred to as "CCC"). "). According to the National Intellectual Property Oral Examination Announcement, OPPO and Xiaomi are simultaneously challenging the invalidity of CCC’s patents.

According to the National Intellectual Property Oral Examination Announcement, OPPO and Xiaomi are simultaneously challenging the invalidity of CCC’s patents. Verified by Jiwei.com, CCC is launching patent infringement lawsuits against OPPO and Xiaomi in China. As soon as it started, it faced Xiaomi and OPPO, the top two domestic mobile phone companies. Especially when the global economy is down and the domestic mobile phone industry is facing a cold winter, who is this NPE? There is not much content about CCC in public reports. After sorting it out, it was found that there are two most critical pieces of information: first, the patents operated by CCC come from Huawei; second, CCC has initiated patent litigation in multiple jurisdictions.

CCC has a close relationship with Huawei. From the patent list published on the CCC official website, we can see that the patents operated by CCC originated from Huawei, and the owner of some patents is still shown as Huawei. CCC was established in May 2019 and transferred a number of patents from Huawei in July 2020. Why did CCC transfer Huawei’s patents? According to analysis, this may be related to an NPE called EVS Codec Technologies, LLC ("ECT"). ECT was established in 2018. Its operating patent comes from VoiceAge’s EVS patent. In the same year of its establishment, ECT sued Huawei, ZTE and LG. In July 2019, ECT reached a settlement with Huawei. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but the industry speculated that one of the terms of the settlement was that Huawei would transfer some of its patents. Both CCC and ECT were founded by a man named David Sewell. More importantly, CCC was established two months before ECT settled with Huawei.

Currently, CCC has initiated patent litigation using Huawei patents in multiple jurisdictions. In addition to the aforementioned CCC suing OPPO and Xiaomi in China, in April 2021, the CCC sued LG Electronics in the United States, using 6 EVS patents transferred from Huawei. The six patents challenged by Xiaomi and OPPO for invalidity in China are the Chinese equivalents of the six patents used by the CCC to sue LG. At the same time, it is not ruled out that the CCC has also initiated similar patent litigation in other jurisdictions.

Faced with the prospect of setbacks in its main business, Huawei has made frequent moves in its intellectual property strategy. Recently, Huawei announced that it will operate its patents in the WIFI field through Sisvel. Public information shows that after Sisvel used patents in the communications field to sue companies such as Xiaomi and OPPO in multiple jurisdictions in 2019, it settled with Xiaomi and OPPO in June and July 2021 respectively. Will transferring patents to NPEs or operating them through patent operating companies make Huawei become another company after Nokia that allocates patents to patent operating companies for licensing fees? Source: Jiwei.com

We will continue to pay attention to the progress of the litigation between CCC, OPPO and Xiaomi.

More intellectual property information and services

Follow the official subscription account of [Shenxin Intellectual Property] on the code

Follow the official service account of [Shentrust Intellectual Property Service Platform] on the code