Koninklijke Philips v Asustek and HTC [2018] EWHC 1732 (Pat)
Philips alleged infringement by HTC and ASUS of three Patents, which it had declared essential to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) standards, in particular the sections that relate to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA/3.5G). This was the second technical trial, concerning the validity of the 659 Patent.
At the Priority Date (12 November 2003), the high-speed downlink shared channel of HSDPA required a separate, associated downlink dedicated channel, (with associated channel code), to be set up for each user. There are a limited number of channel codes available to the base station for downlink transmission. The invention of the 659 Patent proposes a fractional dedicated channel for HSDPA with a single channel code shared by a number of mobiles. In this way, only a single code is used by the fractional dedicated channel for multiple users rather than a code for each user and code channel resources are saved. Unlike common general knowledge dedicated channels, the fractional dedicated channel of the 659 Patent comprises only power control commands, (i.e. it does not include dedicated pilot bits). Dedicated pilots bits were known to be required for UE-specific beamforming and closed-loop transmit diversity with antenna verification. They were also used as part of power control, synchronisation and demodulation, although not technically required for those purposes.
HTC and ASUS accepted infringement but contended that the ’659 Patent is obvious over a single piece of prior art (having dropped their arguments over two separate prior art documents during the course of trial): a cross-referenced pair of temporary documents submitted by Nortel to 3GPP WG1 meetings #32 and #34 in May and October 2003, respectively. The Nortel TDocs decribe a fractional dedicated channel, but all configurations of that channel include dedicated pilot bits.
Arnold J held the 659 Patent to be invalid over the pleaded prior art. He held that omitting the dedicated pilot bits from the dedicated channel was a technically obvious choice notwithstanding the impact on backwards compatibility.
Mark Vanhegan QC and Adam Gamsa were instructed by Bristows for Philips