It is said that on August 26th, the British Supreme Court unanimously rejected the patent dispute appeal requests of Huawei, ZTE, Unwired Planet and Covenson, and confirmed that British judges can set global royalty rates for widely used telecommunications technologies.
Seeing this news for the first time, Joey looked curious: How could Huawei be sued by Britain?
After searching, it turned out that the plaintiff was not a British company, but an American patent operation company, Unwired Planet.
And the lawsuit between Unwired Planet and Huawei started as early as six years ago.
Many netizens may not have heard of the name Unwired Planet.
But in the science and technology circle, Unwired Planet has long been notorious because it is a well-known patent operation company in the United States.
What is patent operation?
It is those companies that have no or almost no physical business and mainly rely on taking the initiative to initiate patent infringement lawsuits to survive. (from encyclopedia)
Wireless planet is the originator of patent operation.
There are countless companies sued by Unwired Planet in history, including technology giants such as Google, Apple, Samsung and Huawei ...
How did Wireless Planet do it?
Simply put, Unwired Planet first buys patents from other technology companies, and then takes these patents to court everywhere.
According to the data:
In 20 13, Wired Planet obtained more than 2,000 patents from Ericsson, including 753 patents about using 2G, 3G and LTE technologies in 42 countries or regions such as China, the United States and the United Kingdom.
In 20 14, Unwired Planet took these patents and filed patent infringement lawsuits against Huawei, Google, Samsung and other technology companies in Britain and Germany.
Just bought a patent and want to realize it?
Yes, that's what Unwired Plane did and made a lot of money in this way.
According to the data, Wired Plane currently has more than 2,500 patents, and the annual net profit of these patents is as high as 36.4 million US dollars, totaling 250 million RMB. (From the Internet, the data is for reference only)
Although every lawsuit of Unwired Planet focuses on big companies, the company itself is not big: according to the Internet, Unwired Planet currently has only 16 employees.
16 people earn 250 million a year? Think about how violent this company is to make money!
It is worth mentioning that Unwired Planet did not operate as a patent at first.
According to public information, Wired Planet used to be a communication company, just like Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola. After going through bankruptcy, I switched to patent operation.
1996, Wired Planet was founded in Hongmu Town, California, USA, mainly engaged in communication business, and its masterpiece was WAP, a well-known technology at that time.
This technology is the most basic and primitive technical protocol for mobile Internet access.
Through this technology, we can send and receive emails, query data, browse financial information, financial information and so on on the mobile phone screen …
1997, Wired Planet, together with Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola, established WAP Forum, which is a non-profit organization that provides Internet access standards for mobile devices and terminals.
1In March, 998, Wired Planet released WAP 1.0, which is the earliest wireless communication standard protocol.
After the great achievements in communication standards, 1999, Wireless Planet focused on mobile Internet applications.
Unwired Planet firmly believes that software is the future!
In this way, in the next few years, Wired Planet developed many advanced products, such as Mobilebrowser, voice and video messaging …
The software was well done. Why did you start patent operation later?
In fact, it is no accident that Unwired Planet transformed from a software company to do patent operation.
20 1 1 The technology of the unconnected planet has been imitated by other companies.
It is understood that at that time, Apple and RIM unscrupulously copied the patent of email processing of Unwired Planet, and the two companies achieved great success through plagiarism.
Seeing that your hard-earned achievements will be taken away by others in vain! Unwired Planet refused to accept it and asked Apple and RIM to pay it a patent license fee.
However, this request was rejected.
Unwired Planet couldn't bear it any longer. In August of 20 1 1, Apple and RIM were brought to court at the same time, demanding that ITC ban the sales of related products.
However, at that time, Unwired Planet did not have many sources of funds, and its finances were always weakened.
20 12, the unconnected planet failed to wait for the court decision, and the company could no longer support it. It didn't take long to declare bankruptcy.
It is this patent lawsuit with Apple and RIM that makes Unwired Planet see the great value of patents and the great business opportunities of patent operation.
According to the grapevine, when the company went bankrupt, Unwired Planet resold its original main business, but kept its own patent.
In addition, in 20 13, Unwired Planet also obtained more than 2,000 patents from Ericsson, including 753 patents on the use of 2G, 3G and LTE technologies in 42 countries or regions such as China, the United States and the United Kingdom.
With these patents, Unwired Planet officially transformed into a patent operation, and went forward bravely on the road of patent authorization and litigation.
After the transformation of patent operation, Unwired Planet has to do two things: buy patents and license fees.
At present, Wired Planet has about 2,500 patents. With these patents, Wired Planet can charge fees for their external licenses and file lawsuits without paying.
Search statistics show that Unwired Planet has sued many technology companies, including Google, Apple, Samsung and Huawei.
Among them, five patents are standard essential patents, namely "Method and device of wireless telecommunication network" (EP(UK)2229744), "Self-configuration and optimization of wireless telecommunication network" (EP(UK)2 1 19287 and EP(UK)24855 14).
Another non-standard patent is "Method and device for establishing unidirectional data path connection" (EP (UK) 989,712).
In the face of the lawsuit initiated by Unwired Planet, Google and Samsung have reached a settlement with, and only Huawei is still deadlocked with it.
The reason for the stalemate is that the two sides have not reached an agreement on the royalty rate. Previously, Huawei only had to pay about 0.034% of the revenue of 4G equipment in Ericsson, while Unwired Planet required 4G mobile phones to pay 1.69% and mobile network equipment to pay 2.29%.
Simply put, the asking price of Unwired Planet is too high, and the asking price of Huawei is too low.
This lawsuit is six years in a dozen.
On August 27th, 2020, Wired Planet won the lawsuit against Huawei. The British Supreme Court supported Wired Planet and confirmed that British judges can set global patent fees for widely used telecommunications technologies.
So, the ins and outs of this lawsuit are very clear.
A software company that went bankrupt due to lack of intellectual property protection transformed into a patent operation.
And claim compensation from the original peers through patent litigation.
What a smart software company!
Quote a sentence from Wireless Planet: Software is not the future, but intellectual property is the future!