Further FRAND Findings In The UK

For those interested in all things fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory, especially FRAND disputes, a further battle has recently taken place in the UK Patents Court – relating to 3 European Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) which were asserted by Philips against both Asus and HTC on the basis that Philips' standard essential technology was used in Asus and HTC's products.  The patents concerned various aspects of "High Speed Packet Access" in the telecommunications UMTS standard, specifically packet transmission check and power control techniques.

The Court held that two of these patents ("525" and "511") were valid and infringed (the Defendants had already accepted infringement/essentiality before trial for the 525 patent).  The remaining patent ("659") was found to be invalid for lack of inventive step.  It is worth noting that the Dutch Court was less permissive than the UK Court in proceedings relating to the inventiveness of the Dutch counterparts – all of