Nokia Files Lawsuit Against Oppo Over Patent Infringement

By Betty Joita

Posted on July 12, 2021

While we don’t have a lot of information on Nokia’s upcoming smartphones, that doesn’t mean the company is not keeping busy – on the contrary, it has just filed a lawsuit against Chinese smartphone company Oppo, for patent infringement in four countries.

Back in 2018, Nokia filed 5G patents which meant that all companies that planned to use them would have to pay a fee for each smartphone produced using those technologies. Lenovo has already had to deal with Nokia’s wrath in a similar lawsuit, though the companies have reached a settlement in April of 2021.

Nokia did announce a patent license agreement with Oppo in 2018 as well, but that license has since expired and Oppo has not renewed. The renewal would have allowed it to continue using the patent legally and it seems that Oppo has not paid the renewal tax, from which it is exempt in China, but not in Europe.

The patents range from connectivity, interface and security features all the way to 5G. Media reports claimed that Oppo found Nokia’s action “shocking” and accused it of not honoring the patent license on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.
Oppo stated that it “respects and protects its own and third-party intellectual property rights, and has been committed to benign patent licensing cooperation in the industry.“

According to a statement from Nokia, it has “been negotiating the renewal of our patent licensing agreement with Oppo but unfortunately they have rejected our fair and reasonable offers. Litigation is always our last resort and we have offered to enter into independent and neutral arbitration to amicably resolve the matter. We still believe this would be the most constructive way forward.”

The lawsuit has been filed in a number of European and Asian countries and, most likely, Oppo will countersue, though the dispute will most likely not last very long, at least not as long as the company’s other lawsuits filed against Lenovo and Daimler.

The two companies will most likely reach an agreement in the style of Nokia vs. Lenovo, but we’ll have to wait and see what’s going to happen in the next few days.