Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi faced a significant legal setback in India towards the end of 2014 when the Delhi High Court directed it to temporarily discontinue the sale of its smartphones. The Court subsequently permitted Xiaomi to continue selling models that incorporate Qualcomm chips until February 5, when the next hearing in the patent case was scheduled.<\/p>\n
Xiaomi’s legal difficulties in India stem from a suit filed by Swedish technology company Ericsson, which alleged infringement of eight of its patents. In ordinary circumstances, a company found liable for patent infringement pays royalties, and the resulting increase in per-unit costs is passed on to consumers. Xiaomi, however, publicly assured that it would continue to offer smartphones at what it described as a “low price-performance ratio” and that the ongoing patent dispute would have no effect on the pricing of its devices in India. The company indicated that it planned to launch further competitively priced products in the Indian market, including the flagship Mi 4 and other devices such as the Mi TV.<\/p>\n
With the Court partially lifting the ban and permitting Xiaomi to sell Qualcomm-powered handsets, the company became able to sell the Redmi 1S and the Redmi Note 4G in India. Qualcomm has entered into cross-licensing agreements with a number of Chinese smartphone manufacturers that use its chipsets, enabling those companies to use each other’s patents without risk of litigation. This arrangement is advantageous to companies such as Xiaomi, which at the time had a comparatively small patent portfolio. Xiaomi had over 1,600 patent applications at that stage, the majority filed in the preceding two years, along with 124 patent grants, of which only 13 were invention patents; the remainder comprised design and utility model patents.<\/p>\n
Manu Jain, head of Xiaomi’s India operations, emphasised the need for a robust risk mitigation strategy, stating:<\/p>\n
We will probably need to be a little more cautious. We will need to be more proactive in putting together a risk management or mitigation plan, to ensure that we can try and foresee any potential risk that might be coming well in advance, not only a court case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Disclaimer<\/h2>\n
This article is for general information and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified attorney before acting on any matter discussed here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Xiaomi faces a patent dispute in India but continues to offer competitively priced smartphones. The company leverages its agreements with Qualcomm and focuses on risk mitigation while maintaining its commitment to Indian customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":43,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,22,14],"tags":[486,837,6345,158,2315,2946,7009,3121],"class_list":["post-17762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-property","category-ip-commercialization-licensing","category-patents","tag-delhi-high-court","tag-ericsson","tag-india-patent-law","tag-patent-litigation","tag-qualcomm","tag-risk-mitigation","tag-smartphone-royalties","tag-xiaomi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17762"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149733,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17762\/revisions\/149733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}