District Court, The Hague. 28 October 2015, C/09/481474 / HA ZA 15-100 (ZTE Netherlands v Vringo)
In 2012, Vringo acquired a portfolio of approximately 500 patents from Nokia, including EP 1 186 119 B2 (the "Patent"). The Patent concerned a method for transmitting a sequence of symbols and was related to UMTS technology.
From 2012 onwards, Vringo brought proceedings against ZTE companies in various countries, including the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Australia, Brazil, India, Romania and Malaysia. As part of the proceedings, Vringo requested Dutch Customs to seize ZTE's goods. ZTE petitioned in Dutch preliminary proceedings to lift the Customs seizure on the basis that the Patent should not be treated as valid, but this petition was refused by the District Court in October 2014.
Before the District Court gave its ruling in the preliminary proceedings, ZTE also started proceedings on the merits, petitioning the Court to invalidate the Dutch part of the Patent. By applying the problem-solution-approach ("PSA") the District Court ruled that there were two solutions to the problem as framed in the PSA, both of which were obvious to the averaged skilled person. According to the District Court, the choice for the one of the two obvious solutions was not inventive, especially as neither of the solutions offered an advantage over the other. In the event two solutions are equally obvious, no pointer to either one is required.
The Dutch part of the Patent was held invalid and Vringo had to pay ZTE's litigation costs in the amount of € 150,000.
Read the judgment (in Dutch).
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