Joining the Dots in India's Big-Ticket Mobile Phone SEP Litigation

Abstract

Nearly three years after litigation over patents and designs associated with big-ticket mobile technology started in the US, the first salvo in the patent wars was fired in India. Sweden-based Ericsson, a provider of communications infrastructure and services, sued home-grown budget smartphone manufacturer Micromax in early 2013. Patent litigation in the arena of mobile phone technology has steadily risen since. Lei Jun, the chairman of China's largest smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi once said that facing a patent lawsuit "can be considered a rite of passage for a company that is coming of age". The first part of this paper, "Compilation of lawsuits" is an attempt to chronicle the significant developments in big-ticket lawsuits pertaining to mobile technology patents filed in India. The second part, "Commonalities and differences in the lawsuits" is an attempt to join the dots between the developments that were either remarkably common or notably different. All information presented in this paper has been gathered from publicly available sources and is up-to-date till the time of writing (October 31, 2017). This paper has been published as a part of the Pervasive Technologies project at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). Invaluable research assistance was provided by Nayana Dasgupta, Sampada Nayak and Suchisubhra Sarkar (in alphabetical order).

Keywords: patent, India, standard, SEP, standards-essential patent, SEP, FRAND, CCI, antitrust, mobile device, telecommunications, infringement, patent infringement litigation