Koninklijke Philips NV v Asustek Computer Incorporation & Ors [2018] EWHC 1826 (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 and infringement of the 511 Patent.
The 511 Patent (with priority date 3 May 2003) concerns a novel form of fast power control. The conventional approach in CDMA telecoms systems at the priority date (such as UMTS Release 5) was for transmission power to be increased in poor channel conditions and decreased in good channel conditions. This ensures that the received power is approximately equal for all users (irrespective of, for example, the distance of each user’s mobile phone from the base station). The 511 Patent subverts this known, conventional approach, instead reducing data transmission power during bad channel conditions and increasing it should channel quality improve on an intra-data block timescale (i.e. the timescale on which transmission power is conventionally adjusted using transmission power commands to deal with fast fading caused by multipath interference).
The Defendants argued non-infringement on the basis that the construction of the term “data transmit power” ought to include the power of all transmissions, and in particular that of control signals as well as data signals. The Judge rejected that argument and held that the 511 Patent is infringed by the power control of the physical data channels in UMTS Release 6, as specified in Technical Specification (TS) 25.214.
The Defendants also contended that the 511 Patent was obvious over the Physical Layer Standard for cdma2000 Release 0 version 3.0 dated 15 June 2001 (“C.S0002”), the other two cited pieces of prior art having been abandoned by the Defendants shortly before trial. Arnold J held the 511 Patent valid over C.S0002, rejecting the Defendants’ submissions regarding the disclosure of that prior art to the Skilled Person and the steps that it would have been obvious for the Skilled Person to have taken, having read it with interest.
Mark Vanhegan QC and Adam Gamsa were instructed by Bristows for Philips