China patent agency grants ZTE's application to invalidate Vringo patent

ZTE noted the Patent Re-examination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China has granted the company's application to invalidate the CN00812876.6 patent owned by Vringo and its subsidiaries.

The Patent Re-examination Board ruled that the patent asserted by Vringo lacked an inventive element, according to a notice of the decision received by ZTE today. The EP1212919 European patent and other patents equivalent to CN00812876.6, which relates to relocation in a communication system, have been asserted by Vringo in litigations against ZTE in the UK, Germany and Brazil. ZTE is also challenging the equivalent patents in those countries.

"The decision by the Patent Re-examination Board in China is expected to serve as an important reference in other litigations that are based on equivalent patents in other markets," said Shen Jianfeng, Chief IPR Officer of ZTE.

ZTE reserves the right to continue existing action and pursue further legal steps to invalidate other equivalent patents to CN00812876.6 asserted by Vringo in other jurisdictions.

As one of the world's leading technology innovators, ZTE respects the intellectual property of other companies. Despite ongoing efforts by ZTE to negotiate since 2012, the company has been unable to reach an agreement with Vringo to license Vringo's telecommunications patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

In the past five years, ZTE has invested more than RMB 40 billion in research and development. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, ZTE submitted 2 309 filings under the Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2013, the second-highest total globally. ZTE is both a licensor and licensee of IPR and ranked top in the WIPO's PCT application tables in 2011 and 2012, reflecting the company's world-leading efforts in technology innovation.