SEP Essentials

Since I have been so focused of late on Huawei’s conduct in the IEEE, I noticed two recent Huawei deals.  They have been treated as unrelated, but I wonder whether they are, in fact, part and parcel of Huawei’s SEP strategy.  Hence my title: pirates on the move.  1. Nokia acquires Wi-Fi 7 related patents from Huawei .  Buried in an announcement from Nokia that was posted on December 11, 2025 ( New Wi-Fi licensing deals in automotive | Nokia ) is this statement: “In additio

Today I sent a letter to the IEEE about the email sent by Andrew Woodward, a patent portfolio manager at Huawei Canada, to the 802.11 reflector on or around November 10, 2025 (“Huawei email”) which I have previously posted about (see The Huawei IEEE Scandal: Is Huawei a Buccaneer or a Privateer? and IEEE Sanctions - the Huawei Vote Stuffing Scandal Part 2 ) . I sent the letter to the Senior Counsel for the IEEE Standards Association who emailed the 802 LMSC reflector (which

2026 already has been a whirlwind of global activity, including in the world of standards and standard essential patents (SEPs).  The United States has announced its intent “to win the global race for 6G” and obtain “scientific and technological global dominance” ( Global Dominance – The U.S.A.’s Views on Standards and SEPs ). China has further cemented its status as the only country in the world with a well-formulated and consistent strategy and vision around standards and S

I wanted to title this series of posts “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” in a homage to the spaghetti Western’s conception of the American West. However, these categories do not line up so clearly with the current state of the world’s most used SEP litigation jurisdictions.  Instead, I titled this series of posts “The Coherent, the Meh and the Left Behind.” These are more useful categories to describe the SEP policies of the most used—and top emerging—SEP litigation jurisdict

Way back in the early days of this blog, I wrote an article about the EU’s complaint in the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) against China ( First Pop Quiz Revisited - The EU Complaint Against China ).  The EU complaint alleged that China violated the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights “TRIPS” agreement primarily through Chinese courts’ use of anti-suit injunctions.  I wanted to give an update on that case:  it appears that the EU has lost. Although a publi

In Andrew Myles’ guest post ( Convergence and Competition - A Tale of Two Standards Part 4 - Guest Post by Andrew Myles ), he discussed the six companies that have failed to provide a formal response to ISO’s request to confirm whether or not they will grant a FRAND license for their Wi-Fi 6 SEPs.  It’s time to take a deeper dive into some of those six companies.  To remind you, those six companies are: ·        Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (“Huawei,” based out of China), · 

Several of my recent posts have focused on the third prong of standard and SEP analysis: the competition law aspects (see e.g. Back to Basics – An Overview of Competition Law, Standard Development and Standard Setting ).  The Chinese government also has been contemplating how SEP related issues should be addressed under the competition laws and has just released new Anti-Monopoly Guidelines for Standard Essential Patents ( Notice of the State Administration for Market Regulat

There was a point to the first pop quiz. Last year, the European Union filed a complaint in the World Trade Organization against China related to SEP litigation. In its First Written Submission (filed on June 8, 2023), the EU argues that the Chinese courts’ global FRAND setting and anti-suit injunctions violate the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights “TRIPS” agreement. [1] The EU brief argues that the Chinese courts’ decisions to set global FRAND rates and

Here are the answers to the quiz. The first set of cases was the dispute between Microsoft and Motorola, the second the IPCom litigation with Lenovo and the third the Conversant/Huawei dispute. The jurisdictions and why they are outliers are as follows. Jurisdiction 1 – the United States . Patent damages in the United States, including for SEPs, usually are much higher than anywhere else in the world. The US is also a very large market for consumer based standardized prod

Historically, when licensing negotiations fail, large SEP holders file patent infringement lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions against a single implementer. Sometimes implementers file breach of contract (for breach of the FRAND commitment) or declaratory judgement actions against SEP holders when negotiations break down. Here is the story of three such disputes. Each of the jurisdictions listed below is an outlier in its own way. Can you name each of the jurisdictions?