The “First Case of Smart Card Patent in China” Was Settled, With China Merchants Bank Involved

    Taken four years, the so called “first case of smart card patent in China” was settled finally. Yesterday (September 10), Shenzhen Wanglong Intelligent declared that “Wanglong v. Kesong and China Merchants Bank (CMB) patent infringement case” had ended up in settlement. Coson Electronic would pay patent fee from now on while the CMB would stop using the elevator system that infringes right.
    It is known that Wanglong Company has a large amount of invention patents and independent intellectual property rights with respect to IC card elevator system. At the beginning of 2003, through investigation, Wanglong Company found that the control method of elevators in the CMB building was exactly the same as its own invention patent technology. The provider of the IC card elevator system was Shenzhen Coson Electronic Co. LTD. In September, 2003, Wanglong Company sued the two parties to the court, requesting them to stop infringement immediately, stop producing and selling IC card elevator system and claiming indemnity of 500,000 RMB yuan to Coson.
    The CMB said that it had signed intellectual property related escape clauses with Coson when buying the IC card elevator system. They agreed that once problems about intellectual property rights were involved, the CMB would not take any responsibility. The bank was only a user and had no responsibility to learn or investigate whether the product it would buy infringed other companies’ intellectual property rights or not.
    That the CMB had to stop using the infringement elevators was unexpected for people in the business. Related legal experts said this judgment would not only play strong exemplary role to similar patent dispute in the future, but also have profound influence to the development and protection of the intellectual property rights in China.

    September 12, 2007            Source: Beijing Youth daily

Apple Purchases 3G Patent by 56 Million Dollars, iPhone Would Support HSDPA

    On September 10, Beijing time, Apple Company signed a patent-licensing agreementabout 3G with an American wireless-technology company called InterDigital. This seven-year agreement worthies 56 Million and covers current iPhone and hints at a 3G successor. On that day (Friday), the stock of InterDigital was driven up to 24.20 US dollar from 2.99 US dollar, with 14.1% of increase.

    So far, iPhone supports 2.75G EDGE internet and Wi-Fi wireless network. EDGE covers well in America, but its data transmission speed is limited; although the Wi-Fi wireless wideband can make up it in some way, unable to support 3G is always a great pity for iPhone.

    On the post of iPhone for German T-Mobile, it revealed that the T-Mobile version iPhone would support HSDPA network, with speed at 3.6Mbps. T-Mobile prepared for the iPhone three charging set courses, with respectively 49.95/59.95/69.95 euros Monthly Rent, providing unlimited internet traffic, monthly 200/300/400 free airtime minutes, 100/150/200 of free messaging.

    InterDigital is a pioneer at the wireless technology field. It has sold CDMA IS-95 and key patents to Qualcomm which was still an unknown company at that time. Located at Pennsylvania, America, InterDigital has most of its income from patent fee handed over by other companies in the mobile field. Although it is a small company, InterDigital is a leading contributor to the global wireless standard and holds a large amount of patented technologies which it licenses to manufacturers of 2G, 2.5G, 3G and 802 products worldwide.With regard to patent licensing, InterDigital is very active and has patent-licensing agreements with many well-known companies such as Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung Electrics, Panisonic, and Sanyo.

    When CEO of Apple Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in January, he said that Apple had filed for more than 200 patents related to the iPhone. However, as a layman in communication field, Apple has to buy patent licenses of mobile communication techniques from other companies. Thus, when collecting high royalty from the operators, Apple has to pay two million US dollar of patent-licensing fee toInterDigital every three months.

    September 11, 2007                source: Sina Techonology

3M Dismisses Lenovo from ITC Investigation over Lithium Ion Battery Patents

    According to the Business Wire, 3M has dismissed Lenovo Group Ltd. and Lenovo Inc. from the International Trade Commission's (ITC) patent investigation of infringing lithium ion batteries in light of recent settlement agreements 3M reached with two of Lenovo's lithium ion battery suppliers.

    3M reached settlements with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and Sony Corp. whereby they have become licensed sources of lithium ion batteries.

    3M has dismissed Lenovo from the ITC investigation based on Lenovo's certification that all of the lithium ion batteries it imports into the U.S. containing nickel-manganese-cobalt cathode materials are manufactured under license from 3M.

    September 10, 2007            Source: USA Stock Trading Online

1,181 Infringement Cases Unearthed at the Customs in the First Half of 2007

    According to information released on the website of the General Administration of Customs,the Customs throughout China unearthed a total of 1,181 infringement cases in the first half of 2007, involving a value of 169.8 million RMB yuan. Of all the infringement cases, 1,151 were unearthed in export and 30 in import, respectively involving a value of 169.3 million RMB yuan and a value of 0.59 million RMB yuan. Additionally, according to the statistics, in the IPR infringement case, 1,783 related to trademark right, 25 to patent right, and 1,474 to copyright.

Four Taiwan Firms Will Accuse Philips of Charging Unfair Royalties

    Four Taiwan disc-makers finally decide to turn to litigation way for solving the dispute with Philips after several times’ unsuccessful negotiation about the disk patent license. The four firms including Ritek, CMC Magnetics, Prodisc and Daxton said that they had employed lawyers and planed to take legal action against Philips, seeking the return of paid royalties and damages.

    Philips introduced the Veeza scheme at the beginning of 2006, cutting its CD-R royalty by 44 percent, from 0.045 US dollar per piece to 0.025 US dollar per piece. However, the charged sum still took up 25% of the leave-factory price and was asked to be paid off at one time, which draws out almost all of the profit of the makers.

    Later, the Chinese disc-makers complained that Philips strongly required Chinese disc enterprises to pay high royalty and accept unreasonable licensing conditions. According to the disc enterprises, usually the royalty is less than 5% of the sell price of the product, but the royalty charged by Philips is more than 20% of the sell price of the product, which is very unreasonable.

    It is known that Taiwan has been making nearly 80% of CD-R and DVD-R discs in the world, but since most of the technical patents are owned by Philips and Panasonic, it has to pay large amount of royalty to these companies every year. So when the disc industry enter small profit era, it is hard for Chinese disc-makers to afford such large expenses. Meanwhile, the yearly royalty of Philips from CD-R and DVD-R arrives at about 500 euro, 70% of which is from China.

    In response, Philips Headquarter indicated that it felt sorry for the decision Taiwan disc-makers had made and that it had not received official notification yet, but it still would try its best to negotiate with the disc-makers. During an interview yesterday, Staff from Philip China said that they were not very clear about this issue and would keep eyes on it.

    List of the IPR dispute between Philips and Taiwan disc enterprises

    In January 2003, relating to the infringement accusing from Gigastorage and other 18 Taiwan disc enterprises, American ITC judged Philips failed.

    In March 2004, Philips appealed to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

    In September 2005, relating to inappropriate package sell, the court of appeals concludes that Philips won.

    In June 2006, unsatisfied with the Veeza scheme, Taiwan disc enterprises complained to the Fair Trade Commission (FTC).

    In September 2006, CMC Magnetics signed Veeza, Ritek,Prodiscand Daxton joined.

    In September 2007, Taiwan disc enterprises took legal action, seeking the return of paid royalties and damages.

    September 5, 2007            Source: Beijing Business Today