Nokia wins court battle: sales ban on OnePlus and Oppo smartphones?

Finnish mobile communications equipment supplier and former mobile phone manufacturer Nokia won two patent lawsuits last week against the two Chinese smartphone brands Oppo and OnePlus. Now they are threatened with a sales ban for violating 5G patents.

Like the portal JUVE As reported last week, the network specialist and mobile communications equipment supplier Nokia has received confirmation for the second time in the Mannheim Court that Oppo and OnePlus are infringing fundamental Nokia patents by using certain technologies in their smartphones because they do not pay license fees to pay the Finnish patent providers.

Patent litigation has been going on for years

According to Nokia, the court has confirmed that Oppo is indeed using proprietary technologies in its 5G smartphones without paying the license fees owed. This means that these devices are sold illegally without the proper license. This applies to both Oppo’s own devices and to the smartphones of the OnePlus brand, which is even better known in this country and has now been absorbed into Oppo. If both parties do not reach an agreement, there is now theoretically a threat of a sales ban on the German market for certain smartphones from Oppo and OnePlus.

However, Oppo has initially filed new appeals to avert such a case. As so often, the dispute is specifically about so-called “essential patents”, which are fundamental to the 5G standards. The judge often has to decide whether patent protection can actually be applied for certain technologies or whether they are so important that this is not possible. Oppo had actually already agreed with Nokia in 2018 to pay taxes on the patents involved, but the contracts in question have since expired. After negotiations between the two companies failed, Nokia launched its lawsuits to force Oppo, and thus OnePlus, to give in.