LG Electronics Files Lawsuit Against China's TCL in German Court for Infringement of Patents on Essential LTE Communication Technology
Published2019.11.10 10:01Essential technology patents for seamless mobile phone LTE communication
On the 6th (local time), LG Electronics filed a lawsuit against China's TCL in the Mannheim and Düsseldorf district courts in Germany to prohibit patent infringement related to mobile phone communication technology.
The crux of this lawsuit is that certain technologies applied to the feature phones and smartphones sold by TCL infringe on 'LTE standard patents' held by LG Electronics. Standard patents are patents for essential technologies that must be used to implement specific functions in related products.
There are a total of three standard patents that became the subject of the lawsuit. These include a control method to minimize transmission packet loss of a terminal, a method to minimize interference during the uplink synchronization process between a terminal and a network, and a method to effectively control a timer to synchronize uplink time between a terminal and a network. All of these are technologies designed to facilitate LTE communication on mobile phones.
LG Electronics sent its first warning letter to TCL in 2016 and subsequently requested patent license negotiations on several occasions, but TCL did not respond. LG Electronics filed this lawsuit to protect its intellectual property rights and to address the unfair use of patents by competitors.
Jeon Saeng-gyu, Vice President and Head of LG Electronics’ Patent Center, stated, “Intellectual property rights are the fruit of continuous research and development and the source of business competitiveness,” adding, “We will respond resolutely to acts of unauthorized use.”
Meanwhile, LG Electronics filed patent lawsuits regarding LTE standard patents in U.S. and German courts against U.S. mobile phone manufacturer BLU in March of the year before last and French mobile phone manufacturer Wiko in June of last year, respectively.
Subsequently, a patent license agreement was signed with BLU, and the lawsuit filed against Wiko was recently won in the first instance regarding all three disputed patents.
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