Mannheim Regional Court rejects FRAND defence in its first ruling on the issue following the ECJ ruling Huawei vs. ZTE
On 27 November 2015, the Mannheim Regional Court (case 2 O 106/14) granted an injunction against Deutsche Telekom based on European patent EP 1 125 284, which was found to be essential for the AMR-WB standard relevant for wideband audio coding used in HD-Voice transmission. Patentee and plaintiff was Saint Lawrence Communications GmbH, a European subsidiary of Acacia Research Group LLC. Because the accused products offered by Deutsche Telekom included mobile phones supplied HTC and several other handset manufacturers, HTC and others participated in the proceedings as interveners in support of Deutsche Telekom.
Read the entire summary in English here.
Read the decision (in German) here.
Head note and summary: Roland Küppers, Taylor Wessing