SEP enforcement against Chinese car maker BYD reaches Unified Patent Court’s The Hague Local Division

Context: In February we were first to find out about Sol IP’s standard-essential patent (SEP) enforcement against Chinese automaker BYD in the Landgericht München I (Munich I Regional Court) (February 19, 2025 ip fray article). Not long thereafter, an even more well-known SEP holder, Japan’s IP Bridge, followed (and filed) suit (March 11, 2025 ip fray article). Then IP Bridge (April 2, 2025 ip fray article) and Sol IP added injunction requests to several pending cases. At the time we mentioned that the Unified Patent Court (UPC) could also be an interesting jurisdiction for SEP enforcement against car makers such as BYD.

What’s new: We have been able to track down two more Sol IP v. BYD lawsuits, one in the Landgericht Mannheim (Mannheim Regional Court) and, most recently, one in the UPC’s The Hague Local Division (LD). In the UPC, Sol IP is seeking an injunction from the beginning, and not only with respect to various UPC contracting member states, but also Spain.

Direct impact: These new filings, especially the one in the UPC, up the pressure on BYD to negotiate bilateral licenses from dozens of SEP holders or to take an Avanci “one-stop shop” license, which would cover dozens of SEP portfolios, among them the ones belonging to IP Bridge and Sol IP. BYD is growing rapidly in Europe, and a multi-country sales ban could prove highly disruptive.

Wider ramifications: For the most part, car makers don’t have to worry about cellular SEP litigation. Apart from a few Chinese and Indian brands, virtually all car makers have an Avanci license. At the moment, only Tesla, which is pursuing a UK Supreme Court appeal after losing two rounds (March 6, 2025 ip fray article), and BYD prefer (obviously not forever) litigation over licensing.

The case in the Mannheim Regional Court has been assigned case no. 14 O 31/25, and the patent-in-suit is EP2720392 (“Method for transmitting and receiving control information of a mobile communication system”). It was originally obtained by Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

The UPC case no. is  25253/2025. The patent-in-suit, EP2127188 (“Method for generating downlink frame, and method for searching cell”), is also a former ETRI patent.

In the UPC case, Sol IP asks the UPC to exercise long-arm jurisdiction (presumably over a Dutch BYD subsidiary, and possibly over others for which a Dutch BYD subsidiary may serve as the anchor defendant (May 25, 2025 UPC Roundup) under the BSH Hausgeräte v. Electrolux decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) (February 25, 2025 ip fray article).In this case, the key non-UPC country with respect to which Sol IP seeks remedies is Spain. The fact that more and more UPC litigants include Spain in their requested remedial orders may contribute to the realization in Spain that it is not a good idea to decline to join the UPC.

In the UPC, unlike in Germany, it would not have made sense for Sol IP to sue for damages in the beginning and to throw in a prayer for injunctive relief later. The UPC cherishes its frontloaded proceedings: you have to plead or request for everything at the earliest possible stage of proceeding. Lenovo tried to amend two UPC cases against Ericsson to the effect of requesting an injunction, which didn’t pan out (August 6, 2024 ip fray article). Lenovo had its reasons with a view to other jurisdictions, but those were tactical considerations and Lenovo did not even argue to the UPC that they would excuse a delay. Therefore, Lenovo had to file follow-on cases over the same patents only to pursue injunctions.

The UPC strives to decide all cases within about a year, and that is the timeline that BYD will have to prepare for.

Within a year from now, BYD will likely be hit with multiple patent injuncions in Europe, even just based on cases that are already known and pending. There never is such a thing as complete visibility. BYD will struggle to explain to European judges why it rejects the license terms that have been accepted by the vast majority of its competitors.