Nokia winning against Oppo in India
The relationship between Nokia and Oppo is quite complicated at the moment. Oppo was using some of Nokia’s network patents and stopped paying royalties about a year ago on the grounds that Nokia wasn’t selling its patents under FRAND terms.
In the meantime, Oppo continued to sell its products, which led to a ban on sales in Germany and most likely also in France and the UK. Now, the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court has ordered Oppo to pay 23% of its phones sold in India to Nokia. According to the ruling, Oppo has sold around 77 million devices after the licencing agreement for the use of network patents expired in 2018.
The Indian court is just following the examples of German and British courts, but the same verdict in favour of Nokia has also been handed down in the Netherlands and Brazil. It seems to me that Oppo could be in big trouble if the licence agreement isn’t renewed soon.
Nokia has invested around €130 billion in the development of 4G/5G networks, and the licencing agreements for its patents fund further research, so Nokia isn’t shying away from this fight. While getting 23% of sales made in India isn’t bad, prolongation of the licensing deal would be better for Nokia.
