This comes after Nokia won a dispute over patents. The patent wars just never ended, it escalated.
Oppo, OnePlus, and Nokia had a series of patent wars over 4G LTE and 5G technologies. Nokia sued the two companies over nine Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) and five implementation patents in three German regional courts. The Mannheim Regional Court has ruled in favour of Nokia, turning the tide against the two Chinese giants, which forced their withdrawal.
Unlike the very serious case with Huawei, this may not be all in-vain with Oppo and OnePlus. The companies could no longer sell their devices in the country, due to the patent infringement ruling. Nokia is actually one of the world’s largest companies in terms of patents and their 5G SEPs have a total investment of around EUR 129 Billion.
While this sounds shocking, this is not the first time Nokia sued companies over patents. In May 2017, Apple paid Nokia USD 2 billion in damages over infringement in patents, including those from Nokia subsidiaries such as Alcatel-Lucent and NSN. Nokia also sued Lenovo in four different countries including the US, Brazil, India, and Germany over, you guessed it, patent infringement. The two companies made a settlement back in April 2022.
Oppo and OnePlus are yet to respond, but for now, they couldn’t sell their phones over at Germany. Come to think of it, this isn’t as bad as Huawei’s situation as they still have access over US technologies such as Google Services, 5G services, and the use of Qualcomm chipsets.
Source: Hindustan Times, News18
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