KPN, the telecommunications carrier formerly owned by the Kingdom of the Netherlands (long-form name: Koninklijke KPN N.V.), has recently filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Munich against Ford Motor Company's German subsidiary (named Ford-Werke GmbH) over EP2291033 on a "telecommunications network and method for time-based network access." The patent-in-suit has been declared essential to the 4G (LTE) standard, and this particular patent family has been asserted against various defendants over the past ten years.
The Munich I Regional Court's case no. is 7 O 4255/22 (Seventh Civil Chamber; Presiding Judge: Dr. Matthias Zigann). The complaint was served on Ford on May 6. The iconic U.S. automaker has until July 6, 2022, to file its answer to the complaint. Counsel has yet to appear on Ford's behalf. The first of the two hearings that are usually held in patent cases in Munich has been scheduled for September 15, 2022. Normally, a first hearing in a Munich case is focused on claim construction and infringement analysis. The court is currently testing a new approach to cases involving multi-patent disputes between the same parties, with a FRAND hearing in the lead case of a given dispute going ahead first. Here, no other patent infringement complaints by KPN against Ford are known at this stage.
Yet there is a context to this case. Ford is still unlicensed to most if not all of the SEPs in the Avanci pool, unlike several other U.S. car makers:
Tesla is widely known (though it has not been officially confirmed) to have taken an Avanci license (as multiple parallel cases by Avanci licensors against Tesla were dismissed within a few days of each other).
Rivian has been confirmed by Avanci to be licensed; and
just this month, General Motors--Ford's larger neighbor (6 million cars per year vs. 4 million)--was announced as Avanci's latest licensee, with the patent pool firm saying that it has now licensed a total of 37 automotive brands and more than 55 million connected vehicles.
The same week that the Avanci-GM announcement was made, Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas explained in Ericsson v. Apple that an implementer who rejects a FRAND offer, but implements the relevant SEPs anyway, "subject[s] itself to actions for infringement." That's what's happening here. Ford is being sued over SEPs left, right, and center. Here's a non-exhaustive list of blog posts on SEP assertions by six other Avanci licensors (yes, KPN is already the seventh, making me wonder when and where this will end given that Avanci has four dozen contributors) and one non-Avanci licensor:
Sisvel becomes third Avanci licensor to sue Ford Motor Company over cellular standard-essential patents (and a post on Sisvel's Munich cases
Japan's IP Bridge appears close to license agreement with OPPO, but Ford still holding out: 4G standard-essential patent disputes in Munich (the trial will continue the day after tomorrow--Thursday, May 19, 2022)
In alphabetical order, these are the seven Avanci licensors currently enforcing 4G SEPs against Ford:
IP Bridge
KPN
L2 Mobile Technologies
MiiCS
Optis (alongside PanOptis and Unwired Planet)
Sisvel
Sol IP
Lucky Seven? It's going to be hard for Ford to persuade the courts--be it in the Eastern District of Texas, the District of Delaware, or in Munich--that it's not an unwilling licensee.
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