The huge scale and strong judicial independence of the U.S. market allowed the courts of the country to have the final decision power in most of the large multinational patent disputes in the past. Legal experts said that U.S. courts have played a detached role in intellectual property matters and promoted the formation of an innovative culture. And China also wants to emulate it.
Erick Robinson, a former patent director of Qualcomm Asia, said that patent disputes between Huawei and Samsung Electronics have been closely watched because the case has caused conflicts between the two judicial systems; a US judge ordered Huawei not to implement a Chinese court. Previously made was not conducive to Samsung's verdict.
'This kind of thing never happened, at least not so big,' Robinson said in an interview recently.
Huawei made a report in the United States and China in 2016 that it accused Samsung of unauthorized use of Huawei's cellular communications technology and unreasonably postponed access to the licensing agreement. Samsung Electronics denied allegations and accused Huawei of intending to “substantially” irritate licensing fees. .
In January, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court made a judgment step ahead of the San Francisco Federal Court of Justice and ruled that Huawei had won the lawsuit and ordered the Chinese affiliates under Samsung Electronics to ban the manufacture and sale of 4G LTE smart phones in China.
Robinson said that once the order comes into effect, Samsung Electronics will face tremendous pressure for reconciliation because Samsung has a huge factory in China and has sold millions of mobile phones in China.
Huawei and Samsung Electronics declined to comment.
Richard Vary, former head of Nokia's legal affairs, said that when multinational corporations are considering the jurisdiction to sue for patent litigation, the ranking of Chinese courts in their minds has climbed from 'fourth or fifth'. Richard Vary currently practises in London.
'China is now second only to the United States, and it has even surpassed the United States, so you now regard it as the main venue of debate.'
Quick verdict
In a parallel litigation in the United States in April, the judge ruled that Huawei could not enforce the ban announced by the Shenzhen court, because this would effectively force Samsung to accept Huawei's request for a patent royalty fee, 'the impact of which will spread to the world'.
But several legal experts said that this may not be Huawei's decision, because Chinese courts can directly impose a ban on Samsung. Robinson said that the US court ruling will even increase this possibility, because its ruling that appears to be extraterritorial may ' Enraged the Chinese government'.
Both Shenzhen and San Francisco courts face appeals, so direct conflicts between the two judicial systems may still be avoided.
Chinese courts are under the control of the Communist Party. New York patent attorney Gaston Kroub said that lack of judicial independence is still the biggest obstacle to the widespread recognition of Chinese courts.
He pointed out that some people may think that the Shenzhen court's ruling favored Huawei. Huawei's headquarters is located in Shenzhen.
However, the Central Financial Leadership Group directly chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping requested the patent case to be objective, fair and predictable in November last year to encourage economic innovation.
Unlike US courts, speed is a major advantage of Chinese courts, which greatly limits the number of documents that can be obtained by related parties.
'The claims can be fairly quickly decided and they are really smart,' said David Pridham, CEO of Dominion Harbor, a Texas-based patent consulting firm.
Kroub said that Chinese courts are also more willing to issue harsh injunctions, such as the Shenzhen court's ban on the Huawei-Samsung case, and US courts tend to award compensation. He said such a strong ruling is in some cases for companies. May be quite attractive.
'I may choose to shut down competitors' productions to severely damage them,' said Kroub.