Just now, the news that "Huawei and ZTE lost the lawsuit in the UK" aroused Qiao Yi's curiosity.
What we are saying is that on August 26, the British Supreme Court unanimously rejected the patent dispute appeal requests of Huawei, ZTE, Unwired Planet, and Conversant, and confirmed that British judges can set global standards for widely used telecommunications technologies. Royalty rates.
When he first saw this news, Qiao Yi was curious: Why is Huawei still being sued by the UK?
After a search, it was discovered that the plaintiff was not a British company, but Unwired Planet, a patent operating company in the United States.
Moreover, the lawsuit between Unwired Planet and Huawei started 6 years ago.
Many netizens may have never heard of the name Unwired Planet.
But in the technology circle, Unwired Planet has long been notorious because it is a well-known patent operating company in the United States.
What is patent operation?
Those companies have little or no physical business and survive mainly by aggressively launching patent infringement lawsuits. (From encyclopedia)
Unwired Planet is the originator of patent operations.
Countless companies have been sued by Unwired Planet in history, including Google, Apple, Samsung, Huawei and other technology giants...
How did Unwired Planet do it?
To put it simply, Unwired Planet first buys patents from other technology companies, and then uses these patents to launch lawsuits everywhere.
According to data:
In 2013, Unwired Planet acquired more than 2,000 patents from Ericsson, including 753 related to 2G, 3G and LTE technologies in China, the United States, the United Kingdom, etc. Patents used in 42 countries or regions...
In 2014, Unwired Planet used these patents to file patent infringement lawsuits against technology companies such as Huawei, Google, and Samsung in the United Kingdom and Germany.
Just bought the patent and want to cash it in?
Yes, this is what Unwired Plane does, and they make a lot of money through this method.
According to data, Unwired Plane currently owns more than 2,500 patents, and its annual net profit from these patents is as high as 36.4 million U.S. dollars, totaling 250 million yuan. (Sourced from the Internet, data is for reference only)
Although Unwired Planet always singles out large companies for every lawsuit, the company itself is not large: According to online reports, Unwired Planet currently has only 16 employees.
16 people earn 250 million a year? Think about how violently this company makes money!
It is worth mentioning that Unwired Planet was not a proprietary operation at the beginning.
According to public information, Unwired Planet was once a communications company, as famous as Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola. It went through bankruptcy before switching to patent operations.
In 1996, Unwired Planet was founded in Redwood City, California, USA. It was mainly engaged in communications business. Its representative work was a well-known technology at the time: WAP.
This technology is the most basic and original technical protocol for mobile phones to access the Internet.
Through this technology, we can send and receive emails, query data, browse financial information, financial information, etc. on the mobile phone screen...
In 1997, Unwired Planet joined forces with Ericsson and Nokia , and Motorola established the WAP Forum, which is a non-profit organization that establishes standards for providing Internet access to mobile device terminals.
In March 1998, Unwired Planet released the WAP standard architecture WAP1.0, which is the earliest wireless communication standard protocol.
After making great achievements in communication standards, in 1999, Unwired Planet focused its efforts on mobile Internet applications.
Unwired Planet firmly believes that software is the future!
In this way, in the next few years, Unwired Planet developed many advanced products, such as mobile browser Mobilebrowser, Voice and Video Messaging...
The software is well done , why did you start patent operations later?
In fact, it is not accidental that Unwired Planet transformed from a software company to a patent operation.
In 2011, Unwired Planet's technology has begun to be imitated by other companies.
It is understood that at that time, Apple and RIM brazenly copied Unwired Planet's email processing patents, and these two companies achieved great success through plagiarism.
Seeing that the results of my hard work are about to be taken away by others! Unwired Planet was dissatisfied and demanded that Apple and RIM pay patent licensing fees to it.
But this request was rejected.
Unwired Planet couldn't bear it anymore, so in August 2011, it took Apple and RIM to court at the same time and asked ITC to ban the sale of related products.
However, Unwired Planet did not have many sources of funds at the time, and its finances had always been a flaw.
In 2012, Unwired Planet failed to wait for the court's decision. The company could no longer support it and declared bankruptcy not long after.
It was this patent litigation with Apple and RIM that allowed Unwired Planet to see the huge value of patents and the huge business opportunities in patent operations.
According to rumors, when the company went bankrupt, Unwired Planet sold its original main business but retained its patents.
In addition, in 2013, Unwired Planet also acquired more than 2,000 patents from Ericsson, including 753 patents related to 2G, 3G and LTE technologies used in 42 countries or regions including China, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Patents...
With these patents, Unwired Planet has officially transformed into a patent operation, and is moving forward courageously on the road to patent authorization and litigation.
After transforming its patent operations, Unwired Planet will do two things: buy patents and charge licensing fees.
Currently, Unwired Planet owns about 2,500 patents. With these patents, Unwired Planet can use them to license fees and sue without paying.
Search statistics found that Unwired Planet has sued many technology companies, including Google, Apple, Samsung, and Huawei.
Among them, 5 are standard essential patents, namely "Method and Device for Wireless Telecommunications Networks" (EP(UK) 2,229,744), "Self-configuration and Optimization of Wireless Telecommunications Networks" ( EP(UK) 2,119,287 and EP (UK) 2,485,514), "Methods for improving handover between mobile communication systems" (EP(UK) 1,230,818), "Based on selected relevant attributes Orthogonal Hadamard sequence communication method and device” (EP (UK) 1, 105, 991).
There is also a non-standard essential patent, which is "Method and device for establishing a one-way data path connection" (EP(UK)989,712).
Faced with the lawsuit initiated by Unwired Planet, Google and Samsung successively reached settlements with it, but Huawei has maintained a stalemate with it.
The reason for the stalemate is that the two parties did not reach an agreement on the patent royalty rate. Previously, Huawei only had to pay about 0.034% of its 4G equipment revenue with Ericsson, while Unwired Planet required a fee of 1.69% for 4G mobile phones and 2.29% for mobile network equipment.
To put it simply, Unwired Planet’s price is too high, and Huawei’s price is too low.
This lawsuit lasted for 6 years.
News on August 27, 2020, Unwired Planet won the lawsuit against Huawei. The British Supreme Court supported Unwired Planet and confirmed that British judges can set global patents for widely used telecommunications technologies. Usage fee rate.
So, the ins and outs of this lawsuit have become clear.
A software company that went bankrupt due to a lack of intellectual property protection transformed into a patent operation.
And expropriate from the original colleagues through patent litigation.
What a software company with high understanding!
To quote Unwired Planet: Software is not the future, intellectual property is the future!