It is reported that Xiaomi and Philips have reconciled, but the problem of double billing of HEVC patents remains to be solved – yqqlm

Jiwei.com learned from overseas channels that the invalidation procedure initiated by Xiaomi against Philips’ HEVC-related patents in Germany has been withdrawn. This means that the HEVC patent dispute between Xiaomi and Philips has most likely been settled.

The HEVC dispute between Xiaomi and Philips is part of the Access Advance (“AA”) patent pool partial licensor v. Xiaomi, Vestel. The incident was one of the most influential in the dispute over the AA’s much-discussed double-billing issue.

If the reconciliation has indeed occurred, it will be the second time this year that the incident has progressed, and it will all develop in a direction that is beneficial to the implementer. Perhaps the HEVC technology popularization process, which has been progressing slowly, is expected to usher in a breakthrough.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether this case can force the AA to solve its widely controversial double billing problem, thereby clearing the obstacles to HEVC patent licensing.

In August 2020, the patent licensors of the AA patent pool – GE Video, IP Bridge, Philips, and Mitsubishi sued Xiaomi, while GE Video, IP Bridge, Philips, and Dolby sued the Turkish set-top box manufacturer Vestel. Since then, disputes between AA and patent implementers such as Xiaomi and Vestel have been made public. For details of the case, see “Video Coding Licensing Meets Changes! Access Advance Patent Pool Frustrated in German Court”, which will not be repeated here.

Earlier this year, GE Video and Dolby, among the four licensors, were ruled not to comply with FRAND principles by the Düsseldorf court in their lawsuit against Vestel, and their applications for injunctions were dismissed. This result has caught the attention of the industry, according to the well-known intellectual property blog FOSS PATENT: “I have seen cases (such as Microsoft v. Motorola) in which the patent pool rate serves as an important reference point to help judges. FRAND decision. But as far as I know, it is unprecedented for a court to decide that the licensing conditions for a patent pool are “non-FRAND.” That would be a disgraceful outcome.”

This ruling directly forced the AA to adjust its licensing return policy, although it has changed the soup but not the medicine (see “Behind Samsung’s Sued: Access Advance’s Licensing Return Policy Changed the soup but not the medicine”), its impact can also be seen. In terms of time, the settlement between Philips and Xiaomi is also related to the Düsseldorf ruling. more in line with its expected licensing conditions. This is the second time this year that the incident has turned in favor of the implementer.

Impact: Shaking AA’s insistence on licensing conditions

As one of the founders of AA, Philips chose to settle with Xiaomi as soon as possible in this lawsuit, which undoubtedly shook the licensing conditions that AA now insists on.

On the one hand, if the settlement does happen, will it further affect the outcome of the litigation between Xiaomi and GE Video, Mitsubishi and IP Bridge? Probably. The current mainstream method for determining SEP licensing rates is a combination of top-down and comparable licensing laws, and the video codec field does not have a “license cap” argument in the field of cellular communications, so comparable rates are in this type of litigation. The weight is very large. In the follow-up litigation, if Xiaomi submits the licensing conditions reached with Philips to the court, it is likely to become an important reference evidence for the court’s judgment.

On the other hand, as previously reported by Jiwei.com, the right holder of AA overlaps with MPEG LA, another patent pool that provides HEVC licenses. , of which Samsung is AA’s largest licensor. MPEG LA was established long before AA, and many implementers have joined MPEG LA, and then there is the problem of duplicate licenses (and AA rates are higher) when they join AA. Xiaomi is one of them, and that’s where the lawsuit came from. The settlement with Philips means that in the AA patent pool, the scope of rights holders who have reached a license with Xiaomi has been further expanded. In other words, for Xiaomi, the scope of repeated licensing of AA is wider. If AA and Xiaomi negotiate a settlement in the future, the problems of double billing and inconsistent rates (AA rates are higher) will become more prominent. The duplicate license was the main reason why the Düsseldorf court found that the license conditions of the AA did not comply with the FRAND principle. As you can imagine, without addressing the double billing issue, the justification of AA licensing is hardly tenable.

In this sense, the reconciliation between Xiaomi and Philips may be expected to serve as a breakthrough in the HEVC licensing barrier, guiding the licensing of video codecs to a more reasonable direction. Of course, this depends on the subsequent development of the event. Jiweiwang will continue to pay attention to this matter.