Xiaomi
India has been embroiled in a legal battle with Ericsson. According to
the latest reports, Ericsson has claimed that Xiaomi is violating the
Delhi High Court’s order by still selling phones with the MediaTek-based
chipsets via a website called www.xiaomishop.com. But Xiaomi’s lawyers
have refuted the claim saying that the company has absolutely no stake
in the website and in fact some third party is misusing its name.
This
issue first surfaced when in early December, a Delhi High Court interim
order restrained Xiaomi as well as Flipkart from selling handsets in
India as it was infringing on Swedish telecom firm Ericsson’s patents.
The
order was passed on the plea of Ericsson that Xiaomi had been violating
its eight patents pertaining to AMR, EDGE and 3G technologies in the
field of telecommunication. According to SpicyIP, Xiaomi reportedly
infringed upon the patents: Standard, Essential Patents (SEPs) which are
subject to FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory) terms. It
added that these are the same patents on which Ericsson had sued Indian
companies such as Micromax, Gionee and Intex. Ericsson having registered
patents had all the rights to pull up any company infringing on them.
Ericsson
was able to get an ex-parte injunction against Micromax – which means
that the other side (here Micromax) did not have chance to presents its
case. Ericsson then asked Micromax to produce a huge royalty fee which
was to be deposited in the courts.
Ericsson
said that it had invited Xiaomi to use its patented technology by
obtaining a license, but instead of doing so, the Chinese manufacturer
launched its devices in India in July 2014. Ericsson stated that it made
attempts for 3 years to get Xiaomi to buy their licenses for products
compliant with GSM, EDGE and UMTS/WCDMA.
Xiaomi
later announced that it would suspend the sale of its smartphones in
India, prompting vice president Hugo Barra in putting out a statement to
that effect. At the time, Xiaomi was selling the entry level Redmi 1s
at Rs 5,999 and the Redmi Note 3G at Rs 8,999. Around this time, Xiaomi
had already received around 150,000 registrations for the next sale of
Xiaomi Redmi Note on Flipkart. There was no way out for Xiaomi but to
have talks with Ericsson.
Around
Dec 16th, the Delhi High Court allowed Xiaomi to sell and import phones
based on Qualcomm chipsets only. This would mean, Redmi Note 3G which
ran on MediaTek MT6592 SoC, would be debarred from future sales in
India.
The
court’s order which allows Xiaomi to sell Qualcomm-based handsets still
stands and the next hearing is scheduled for March 18th.
This
recent claim by Ericsson regarding sale of MediaTek-chipset sporting
Xiaomi handsets has been refuted by Xiaomi. According to India head Manu
Jain, the online shop www.xiaomishop.com is not authorised by Xiaomi to
sell phones anywhere in the world including India. It is not a Xiaomi
entity either. In fact, Jain claims that Xiaomi intends to take legal
action against the portal as it has continued selling Xiaomi products
despite being requested by the company not to do so. By selling Xiaomi
products without their express permission, the web portal is also
infringing on Xiaomi’s trademarks according to Jain.
Posted by : Gizmeon
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