China’s Supreme People’s Court Sets Low FRAND Rate in Another OPPO Case
Fresh off OPPO’s victory at the Chongqing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court in a global Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) standard essential patent (SEP) rate setting case, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) of China set a low rate in another case for six Chinese SEPs 99813601.8、00815854.1、99813602.6、99813640.9、01803954.5 and 99813641.7 related to the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) standard. The SPC ordered OPPO to pay Advanced Codec Technologies LLC (ACT) 15,390,527 RMB (~$2.165 million USD) or $0.008 per unit, with an average licensing fee of around $0.0013 per unit for each patent. ACT had initially sued OPPO requesting 342 million RMB (~$48.1 million USD).
US-based ACT initially filed six separate lawsuits against OPPO at the Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court in November 2018. ACT accused Oppo of infringing Chinese patents 00815854.1 and 01803954.5 by manufacturing and selling 44 mobile products. In November 2021, the Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court ruled against OPPO ordering OPPO to pay an undisclosed licensing fee to ACT. Both parties appealed to the SPC, leading to the judgement discussed here.
The date of the ruling is December 12, 2023 for case numbers (2022）最高法知民终907、910、911、916、917、918号. A redacted copy of the ruling is available from here (Chinese only).
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