Courts in Paris and the Hague invalidated one Vringo patent on telecommunication systems and declared another one not essential to the UMTS standard
ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, welcomes decisions issued by courts in France and the Netherlands in patent litigations with Vringo Inc.
The Civil Court of Paris ordered Vringo to bear legal costs after rejecting all its claims against ZTE over European Patents EP1221212, which was deemed to be invalid, and EP1212119, which was deemed not to be essential to the UMTS standard and thus not infringed by ZTE. Separately, District Court of the Hague adjudged Vringo’s European Patent EP1212119 to be invalid because of lack of inventiveness. Both patents relate to telecommunications systems.
As a leading technology innovator, ZTE respects the intellectual property of other companies and is willing to negotiate royalty fees with license holders based on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) principles. ZTE has completed global intellectual property licensing agreements with holders including Qualcomm, Siemens, Ericsson, Microsoft and Dolby Laboratories.
ZTE has filed applications for more than 60,000 patents, with over 17,000 granted. ZTE ranked third globally in patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in the latest annual report published by the World Intellectual Property Organization in March. That was the fifth successive year in which ZTE was ranked inside the Global Top-3 by WIPO.