Court Awards Nearly $140M To Patent Firm Outperforming The Market

Author: Anusuya Lahiri | March 17, 2023 12:09pm

U.K.'s High Court ordered Lenovo Group Ltd (OTC:LNVGF) (OTC:LNVGF) to pay $138.7 million to InterDigital, Inc (NASDAQ: IDCC) in settlement of a licensing dispute.
The Court urged Lenovo to pay the penalty for a license to InterDigital's portfolio of 3G, 4G, and 5G patents and pay in full for past sales dating back to 2007.
The Court will decide whether additional interest is due on the one-time payments.
"We welcome the Court's decision as the first major SEP FRAND judgment that recognizes that a licensee should pay in full for the past infringement of standard essential patents, and we agree with the Court that this could be a powerful way of guarding against patent holdout in the future," commented Josh Schmidt, Chief Legal Officer, InterDigital.
"However, we plan to appeal, as we believe that certain aspects of the decision do not accurately reflect our licensing program."
In January, InterDigital shared winning a critical decision from a U.K. court in the company's litigation against Lenovo.
The Court upheld the lower court decision, confirming that Lenovo infringed a valid and essential InterDigital cellular patent.
In July 2021, the U.K. High Court ruled that the patent-in-suit is valid, infringed, and essential to the 4G LTE standard.
IDCC has outperformed the market year-to-date. Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ: QQQ) ETF representative of the Nasdaq index has gained 14.04% YTD, while the IDCC shares gained 48.39% YTD.
IDCC Price Action: IDCC shares traded lower by 1.32% at $73.45 on the last check Friday.