[Article / UK Patents] UK litigation over FRAND-rate determination: InterDigital v Lenovo (Kazuto Kobayashi, Patent, September 2025)
Updated: 3 hours ago
Article information
Article type: Publication review
Categories: Europe
Main topics: Licensing / Injunctions
First published on this website: October 1, 2026
Display and classification checked: October 1, 2026 (not a revalidation of the legal analysis)
[Article / UK Patents] UK litigation over FRAND-rate determination: InterDigital v Lenovo (Kazuto Kobayashi, Patent, September 2025)
<Main issues>
① Was InterDigital's final proposal (5G Extended Offer) FRAND?
② If not, what was the specific FRAND rate?
③ Could an injunction issue if Lenovo was not a willing licensee?
1. High Court decisions (EWHC 539, 1578)
The High Court held that neither party's offer was FRAND.
Rate calculation: It selected LG (2017) as the most comparable agreement. Adjusting for sales regions and proportions of standards, it calculated a blended rate of $0.175 per unit.
Lump sum: For the entire period from 2007 through the end of 2023, it set royalties at $138.7 million.
Interest: To remove the benefit of late payment, it added 4% interest compounded quarterly ($46.2 million), making a total of $184.9 million.
Criticism of volume discounts: It indicated that the large 60–80% discounts given to Samsung and Apple discriminated against smaller implementers and were not FRAND.
Injunction: Lenovo was given the choice of accepting the judgment's terms; an injunction would apply only if it refused.
2. Court of Appeal decision (EWCA Civ 743)
Both parties appealed. The Court of Appeal followed the High Court's reasoning but revised the figures.
Rate revision: Re-examining the LG agreement, it raised the base rate from $0.24 to $0.30 and the adjustment factor from 0.728 to 0.75.
Final ruling: It increased the FRAND rate to $0.225 per unit. The lump-sum principal thus became $178.3 million, with the same interest (4%, compounded quarterly) to be added.
3. Conclusions and implications
This is an important example of a UK court emphasizing the comparables approach and deriving a specific global rate through its own calculation. The following are particularly important in practice.
① Past payments: A willing licensee should pay royalties for all past implementation, regardless of the limitation period for damages claims.
② Transparency: The case showed the risk that extreme preferential treatment for major companies (opaque volume discounts) will be rejected on non-discrimination grounds.
③ Interest: Compound interest was justified to offset hold-out gains from prolonging negotiations.
Original article: https://lnkd.in/gN8gh7Pn
Related articles
Updates and corrections
Substantive corrections and additions are recorded separately from classification, related links and display changes.
October 1, 2026: First publication of the author's original LinkedIn text on this website. Article type, categories, topic tags, sources and consultation navigation added.
2026-10-01 | Display maintenance: added case references stated in the original or language-alternate metadata; not a revalidation of legal analysis.
2026-10-01 | Name notation: replaced verified Japanese-script personal names with Roman-letter forms in this English article and its navigation. Legal analysis and original publication date unchanged.
Comments