Mitsubishi and Sisvel v Oneplus et al [2021] EWHC 1639 (Pat)
The dispute concerns a pool of telecoms patents (the ‘MCP Pool’) administered by Sisvel. Sisvel is the registered proprietor of EP 2,254,259 and EP 1,903,689 (the ‘Patents’), which had been declared essential to LTE. The Patents are entitled ‘Method and device for transferring signals representative of a pilot symbol pattern’ and have priority dates of 22 September 2006. They concern the use of pilot signals to request uplink resources in a telecommunications network.
The Defendants denied essentiality (and hence infringement) and counterclaimed for revocation of the Patent (on grounds of obviousness and added matter).
Mellor J heard the trial remotely using MS Teams on 19 to 30 March 2021. The Judge held that the Patent was essential to LTE (on a normal construction) and valid over the prior art, a 3GPP Working Group 1 TDoc entitled ‘Uplink scheduling procedure’ submitted by Samsung to RAN WG1 meeting 43 held in Seoul in November 2005.
Adam Gamsa appeared for OnePlus, Oppo and Xiaomi, instructed by Taylor Wessing LLP and Kirkland & Ellis International LLP