The dispute originated in March 2022 when Huawei sought patent licensing from MediaTek based on its portfolio of 5G standard essential patents (SEPs). MediaTek rejected the proposal, asserting that Huawei's demands violated the FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) principles. After 26 months of negotiations without resolution, the parties ultimately filed lawsuits in May 2024.

This settlement also impacts the broader HEVC patent pool licensing market, currently dominated by two major patent pool managers—Access Advance and Via LA—for SEP programs. Microsoft itself is both a licensee and licensor within Access Advance's HEVC patent pool. Approximately one year ago, HP and TCL also obtained HEVC patent pool licenses from Access Advance.

In Europe, the litigation centers on three patents. Nokia asserts its EP 4 250 732 patent before the UPC and its EP 4 099 700 patent before the Munich Regional Court. Both patents relate to technologies improving motion prediction in video encoding. Additionally, Nokia asserted its EP 2 130 150 patent in the Munich court, which provides a method for optimizing media file arrangement based on user profiling.

The patent at issue is Kizik's European Patent EP 4 003 084 (protecting a shoe design with stabilizers), invented by Kizik founder Michael Pratt and granted by the European Patent Office this year. In a parallel infringement lawsuit filed in Texas, Kizik asserts six patents (Patent Nos. 11,633,006; 12,274,325; 11,871,811; 12,121,096; D1038607; and D1037641) against multiple Skechers models.

DivX first filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Netflix in Brazil in October 2020. The involved patent PI 0506163-6 covers video deblocking filters used in video streaming, primarily to enhance visual performance. Brazilian courts granted DivX a permanent patent injunction against Netflix. Additionally, Netflix was ordered to pay approximately $4 million in fines and other legal costs for contempt of court due to non-compliance with the preliminary injunction. This marks Brazil's first issuance of a permanent injunction in an information and communications technology (ICT) patent dispute.

Court documents filed Wednesday allege OpenAI engaged in a “deeply troubling pattern” of poaching former xAI employees to obtain trade secrets related to its AI chatbot Grok. The complaint states, “OpenAI targeted individuals possessing critical xAI technology and business plans—including xAI's source code and operational advantages in launching data centers—then unlawfully induced these employees to breach their confidentiality and other obligations to xAI.”

Headwater recently initiated a series of patent infringement lawsuits against companies including Apple, Amazon, and Google in two federal courts in Texas. Additionally, the company has reached settlements with Samsung, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon over patent disputes. Verizon was ordered to pay $175 million in damages this July, while Samsung was initially ordered to pay $278.8 million.

The complaint alleges that MiniMax systematically appropriated plaintiffs' works through its “Conch AI” image and video generation service. The plaintiffs provided multiple examples of alleged infringements by MiniMax, accompanied by images.

In recent years, Huawei has actively pursued patent enforcement actions through the UPC, filing lawsuits against U.S.-based Netgear, MediaTek, HMD, and Transsion. In January this year, Sisvel officially announced that Netgear had joined its Wi-Fi 6 patent pool and obtained a license, concluding the litigation with Huawei. However, the lawsuits against MediaTek, HMD, and Transsion remain ongoing.

Abbott alleges that the two defendants infringed upon its two patents (EP 3 988 471 and EP 4 344 633) and seeks an injunction against the sale of the relevant products within the jurisdiction of the Unified Patent Court.