Mitsubishi and Sisvel v Oneplus et al [2021] EWHC 1048 (Pat)
The dispute concerns a pool of telecoms patents (the ‘MCP Pool’) administered by Sisvel. Sisvel is the registered proprietor of EP 1,925,142 (the ‘Patent’), which had been declared essential to LTE (TS36.222 v10.0.0). The Patent is entitled ‘Radio Link Control Unacknowledged Mode Header Optimization’ and has a priority date of 23 August 2005. It claims a method for indicating packing in an RLC Protocol Data Unit (‘PDU’) using a length indicator.
The Defendants denied essentiality (and hence infringement), counterclaimed for revocation of the Patent (on grounds of anticipation and obviousness) and objected to unconditional claim amendments (on grounds of extension of scope, lack of support, lack of clarity, added matter and invalidity).
Mellor J heard the trial remotely using MS Teams on 9 to 17 March 2021. The Judge held that the Patent was not essential to LTE (either on a normal construction or pursuant to the doctrine of equivalence) and refused the unconditional amendments. Had the Patent been essential (i.e. on the Claimants’ construction), it would have been anticipated by the Samsung prior art (TDoc R2-051311 entitled ‘Segmentation and Concatenation for VoIMS’ presented to Meeting #47 of 3GPP TSG-RAN2 held in Athens during May 2005) and the common general knowledge.
Adam Gamsa appeared for OnePlus and Oppo, instructed by Taylor Wessing LLP