According to various media reports, TCL and Access Advance (“AA”) have settled their dispute over patent pool royalties. The news appeared on  IPFray and IAM. On November 3, 2024, TCL and at least 17 other Shenzhen-based companies were among the 349 companies on the list of licensees in the AA HEVC patent pool.

TCL had been seeking a pool-level FRAND determination. The SPC decision from late May is not yet available on the official Supreme People’s Court (SPC) database (wenshuwang)), although it has been discussed in the Chinese press and has been considered by some bloggers as a landmark case. As reported in the media, AA had contested the jurisdiction of the Chinese courts over patent pools and appealed to the SPC. The SPC confirmed that Chinese courts have global rate-setting jurisdiction over pools. The SPC had since referred the case to the Shenzhen Intermediate Court. The case broadly aligned with China’s efforts to assert global jurisdiction over FRAND patent disputes. However, the case also conflicted with other decisions, such as Vestel v. Access Advance and Philips, and Tesla v. Interdigital in the United Kingdom, which relied on the legal limitations pools experienced in setting rates for their members.

The case was settled before the Shenzhen court could make a rate-setting determination. One hopes this landmark case will be available soon on the official SPC website. Notwithstanding the limitations in accessing the SPC decision, Judge Randall R. Rader, former USPTO Director David Kappos, and I submitted an amicus-type brief to the Shenzhen Intermediate Court; a copy is available here in Chinese and English. In our submission, we propose that the Chinese courts should further consider the inherent limitations of patent pools as well as how inconsistent the Court’s decision may be with other jurisdictions’ approaches. Moreover, due to China’s increasing participation in global patent pools, a more cautious approach to jurisdiction over pools appears to be in China’s best interests.

We had previously submitted an amicus-type brief in the Qiaodan v. Michael Jordan SPC case as part of the US-China IP Experts Dialogue organized by the US Chamber of Commerce. The Dialogue had long advocated for China’s development of an amicus brief-type system in light of the increasingly influential role played by Chinese cases both domestically and internationally. My posting of the brief is in accordance with our prior efforts to ensure that any amicus-type system is made part of the public record in the relevant proceeding.