On July 30, 2025, local time, the Düsseldorf Regional Division of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) dismissed Headwater Research LLC's (hereinafter referred to as “Headwater”) infringement lawsuit and declared EP3110069 patent invalid. The court ruled that Samsung's counterclaim for patent invalidation based on “new matters” was “well-founded.”
Background of the Dispute
It is reported that in 2024, Headwater initiated a global patent enforcement campaign against Samsung for allegedly infringing on multiple wireless patents, filing lawsuits simultaneously in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and the UPC.
In the U.S. case, the jury ruled in April 2025 that all patents claimed by Headwater were valid and infringed upon, ordering Samsung to compensate Headwater over US$278 million (approximately RMB 2 billion).
The European case was simultaneously heard at the Munich Regional Division of the UPC and the Düsseldorf Regional Court. In the Munich case, Headwater sought damages and a permanent injunction based on patents EP2391947 (“Implementation of Verifiable Device-Assisted Service Strategies”) and EP3110069 (“Device-Assisted Services for Protecting Network Capacity”), but Samsung denied infringing these patents and requested the court to dismiss the lawsuit. In the Düsseldorf case, Samsung also filed a counterclaim seeking to invalidate the EP3110069 patent.
Key Points of the Ruling
In its counterclaim, Samsung raised a patent invalidity claim based on “added matter,” arguing that the patent holder had added content to the claims that was not sufficiently supported by the original patent application documents, thereby rendering Headwater's patent invalid.
The Düsseldorf Regional Court held that the technical features cited by Headwater during the trial were not disclosed in the original priority application documents, as “the processor determines whether ‘network service usage activities’ are running in the background (or foreground), rather than whether the ‘(first) device application’ described in the claims is running in the background (or foreground).” Therefore, the court ruled that Headwater's EP3110069 was invalid and dismissed its infringement lawsuit.
The court cited Rule 9.2 of the Rules of Procedure (RoP), which states that “the court may disregard any steps, facts, evidence, or arguments that either party has not taken or submitted within the time limits set by the court or these rules,” to reject Headwater's new arguments based on the over 200-page priority document first cited during the trial, emphasizing that it violated the principle of the front-loaded procedure. (see the same court's Tridonic case precedent, case number UPC_CFI_459/2023).
The court dismissed all other patent invalidity arguments raised by Samsung, including “vindication” (involving ownership/inventor eligibility issues). Additionally, since the “new matter” argument was sufficient to be the decisive basis for the case, other arguments did not need to be further considered.
Related Events
Recently, Samsung has been actively engaged in global patent licensing and litigation activities. Intellectual Property Finance previously reported that on July 30, Samsung reached a $1.05 billion patent licensing agreement with InterDigital. In terms of litigation, the global patent litigation between Samsung and ZTE continues to escalate. On June 25, 2025, the UK High Court ruled that ZTE Communications violated its obligation to negotiate in good faith under the FRAND terms regarding standard essential patent licensing and granted Samsung a provisional license. Currently, Samsung has filed lawsuits against ZTE regarding standard-essential patents in the UK, Germany, the US, and the Unified Patent Court (UPC), while ZTE has filed patent lawsuits against Samsung in China, Germany, the UPC, and Brazil.
