This Tuesday Nokia sought to enforce an injunction. This injunction was against Lenovo. Lenovo is the worlds biggest PC maker. The injunction was in regards to the Lenovo sales being stopped in Germany. This happened after the violation of a video encoding patent. On 30 September, a Munich court ruled that Hong Kong-listed Lenovo infringed, inter alia, one of Nokia’s patents. They ordered an injunction and revoked goods from retailers.
It’s been almost, if not over a year since Nokia has launched its legal battle against Lenovo. They launched it against alleged infringement against 20 patents. The Finnish company, Nokia has an ongoing case in multiple countries. These countries are; United States, India, Brazil. All of this in addition to the six cases in Germany. However, Lenovo has appealed against the Munich court ruling.
“We believe Nokia has violated its own legal obligations by refusing to license its technology on Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms to either Lenovo or our third-party suppliers whose parts include H.264 technology,” a Lenovo statement said.
What is H.264 Technology?
H.264, in simple words, is a video compressing technology. It is widely used in smartphones and computers. In the past, Nokia has sued Apple for using its patents. They then won the case and received $2 billion in a settlement. That is roughly Rs. 14,689 crores. This took place all the way back in the year 2017.
The Munich court, the judgement of which applies to only Germany rejected Lenovo’s assertion. They said that Nokia had not compiled with FRAND obligations. However, it is said that Lenovo is unwilling to enter discussions with Nokia. It is possible for them to resolve the matter by accepting their responsibilities. As well as agreeing on a license on fair terms.
“Nokia is demanding a highly-inflated global royalty rate that is more than 50 times what Lenovo believes is reasonable and appropriate,” a source at Lenovo said.
However, the Nokia spokesman refused to reveal the final details.
More About Nokia
It is a Finnish multinational company. The headquarters are in the greater Helsinki, Finland. It was founded on May 12, 1865. This makes this company over 150 years old! Nokia employed around 103,000 people in more than 100 countries in 2018. They said to have done business in more than 130 countries. They have also posted annual sales of about EUR 23 billion. Nokia is a public limited company listed on the Helsinki and New York Stock Exchanges.
More About Lenovo
Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to Lenovo. They are a Chinese multinational company. Incorporated in Hong Kong. Its global headquarters are based in Bejing, China. However, the operational headquarters are in Morrisville, North Carolina, US. The founder of Lenovo was Liu Chuanzhi. Te company Lenovo was founded in 1984. More specifically, November 1st, 1984. This makes this company 35 years old (as of October 2020). As of July 2020, the company designs creates, produces, and sells personal computers. They also sell tablets, smartphones, workstations. Mor of their products include servers, supercomputers, electronic storage devices. As well as IT management software, and smart TVs, and they are the world’s largest vendor of personal computers by unit sales.
