Patent Infringement Suit: Interdigital Vc Holdings Inc V. Xiaomi Corporation

7th August, 2020 - 11:00 am Categories: Legal Issues 0 Comments

Recently, two patent infringement complaints were filed by an American mobile and video technology company InterDigital VC Holdings Inc., against the Chinese phone making company Xiaomi Corporation, in the Delhi High Court, alleging unauthorised use of five cellular 3G and 4G patents and three H.265/HEVC (High efficiency video coding patents) by them.The suit by InterDigital surfaces after their claim of ongoing negotiation with Xiaomi, over the years, which did not lead to fruition.

In their complaint, InterDigital is seeking compensatory and punitive damages against Xiaomi and an injunction to prevent further infringement in India, unless Xiaomi agrees to a Fair, Reasonable and Non- discriminatory License (FRAND), as determined by the Court.

The Indian patents asserted in the cellular action are:
• No. 262910 – Relates to an enhancement to 3G known as High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA). The patented invention increases efficiency of bandwidth usage during HSUPA transmission by ensuring that mobile phones utilize resources allocated to them for HSUPA transmission in an efficient manner.

• No. 295912 – Enhances utilization of cellular resources for applications (such as VoIP) which require persistent allocations of uplink resources. In particular, it enables minimization of the overhead signalling needed to modify allocations during periods of inactivity or when the persistent allocations are insufficient.

• No. 298719 – Supports the use of multiple antennae transmissions in 4G (LTE by enabling the use of flexible levels of error protection for reporting by the handset, increasing the reliability of the signalling.

• No. 313036 – Allows mobile phone users quick and efficient access to 4G (LTE) networks. One of the main technological challenges of developing LTE networks was efficient bandwidth usage for various traffic types such as VoIP, FTP and HTTP. This patent relates to inventions for quickly and efficiently requesting shared uplink resources — for example, reducing lag when requesting a webpage on a smartphone on LTE networks.

• No. 320182 – Reduces power consumption by selectively switching the mobile phone’s LTE modem into a sleep mode. The patent enables switching between the sleep and awake modes based on rules within the mobile phone thereby minimizing signalling from the base station.

The Indian patents asserted in the H.265/HEVC action are:
• Nos. 242248 / 299448 – The patented inventions, which stem from a common patent application, provide an enhanced video decoder, which avoids the need for storing and transmitting certain overhead data associated with the encoded pictures. For video streaming, the inventions reduce the network resources required to deliver videos while reducing the memory needed to store videos within mobile phones.

• No. 308108 – Enhances picture quality for a decoded video by providing a series of filters, including an adaptive filter, for reducing noise which is generated during the encoding process. This invention results in visibly clearer video images.

The case is currently listed in the Delhi High Court and is pending for hearing.

Author: Suvangana Agarwal, Litigation Associate at Khurana & Khurana, Advocates and IP Attorneys.  In case of any queries please contact/write back to us at aishani@khuranaandkhurana.com.