Yesterday, we discussed patenting trends in the cleantech industry. Today, we turn to the mobile phone industry, which has matured with fewer reasons for frequent consumer upgrades while standards drive toward better efficiency and data rates to find even more uses for the platforms. The mobile phone industry has exploded over the last decade with nearly all U.S. consumers owning a smart phone. Additionally, many Internet of Things (IoT) devices have gained cellular modems, along with modern heavy equipment having a data connection for telemetry. The wireless standards have innovation that comes in waves, with 3G and 4G/LTE reaching maturation, while 5G has a solid upward trend. The supply chain for mobile phone manufacture has largely moved overseas and many brands have disappeared or moved overseas. Even though the two mobile operating systems are just over a decade old, we are seeing the pace of software innovation plateau with a couple million apps in the respective platform stores. The ubiquity of cellular data will bring the underlying technology to many different industries in the years to come, as the maturity of the industry allows the focus to move away from the platform itself.
Nokia Corporation announced it entered into a patent licensing agreement with Chinese mobile consumer electronics firm OPPO. Although terms of the deal weren’t disclosed by Nokia, the company did state that under the agreement, OPPO would make payments over a multi-year period… OPPO may not receive the same kind of attention that its domestic rivals Xiaomi and Huawei receive, but it has become a major competitor in the Chinese smartphone market in recent years. OPPO had the greatest market share of smartphone makers in terms of Chinese sales during 2016 when the company shipped 78.4 million units to achieve a 16.8 percent market share within the country.
On August 1st, a jury verdict entered in the Southern District of California awarded $145.1 million in reasonable royalty damages to Canadian IP licensing firm Wi-LAN in a patent infringement case against Cupertino, CA-based consumer device giant Apple Inc. The jury determined that Apple infringed upon claims of two patents owned by Wi-LAN.
Swedish multinational telecommunications company Ericsson and South Korean consumer electronics firm LG Electronics announced that they had entered into a global licensing agreement to cross-license patent portfolios held by both companies. The patents in these portfolios include standard-essential patents (SEPs) related to various cellular technologies, including those related to second generation (2G), third generation (3G) and fourth generation (4G) cellular standards.
Ultimately, the jury’s large damage award might not be the lasting storyline of this case. Apple’s “victory” here shows that well-crafted design patents can offer broad protections against even slight infringements by competitors, and that a well-written design patent and a well-argued case can provide tremendous benefits to the patent owners. Given the relatively inexpensive design patent process and what will only be continued speculation as to how these damages should be calculated, a design patent remains a great defense in the face of even limited infringement by market competitors.