Published: 12/2/15
The First Instance Court of Paris has held* that when asserting alleged Standard Essential Patents (“SEPs”), a patent holder first has to show that the process claimed in the asserted patent is identical to the process disclosed in the underlying standard.
Vringo Infrastructure Inc. (“Vringo”) purchased roughly 500 patents declared by their initial owner as essential with the ETSI for implementing the UMTS (3g) standards. Vringo and ZTE exchanged letters on some of the alleged SEPs, their implementation by ZTE and the need for the latter to enter into a Fair Reasonable And Non Discriminatory (“FRAND”) license.