Two world mobile phone giants, Motorola and Ericsson, were recently summoned to the Intellectual Property Division of the Beijing High Court for violating a patent registered by two Chinese inventors.
The patent, a new method of Chinese character input, was developed by Hu Xuanhua and Hu Bin.
According to the inventors, who brought the suit, they signed an agreement with Dalian Hanpu Application Technology Corporation which gave Hanpu the sole right to apply the new technology.
However, four companies including Motorola Electronics Co Ltd (China), Beijing Lufthansa Shopping Center, Ericsson (China) Co Ltd and Beijing Ericsson Mobile Telecommunications Co Ltd were found with the unauthorized use of the patent in their products.
According to the file presented by the inventors, their patent has been applied to Motorola's several modes of mobile phones such as CD928, M366C, V2088, L2000 and Ericsson's T10S, T18SC, R320SC without permission.
In this case, the inventors asked Motorola (China) to stop using the patent and pay temporary compensation of 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million).
They asked Beijing Lufthansa Shopping Center to stop sales of the products containing the technology.
Ericsson (China) and Beijing Ericsson Mobile Telecommunication Co Ltd were asked to stop infringement of the technology through sales and pay temporary compensation of 5 million yuan (US$602,000).
Ericsson has other troubles in the Chinese market. Ericsson was buried with complaints of poor quality of its mobile phones and services.
Early this month, the company's products were found with problems especially in Zhengzhou, capital city of Henan Province.
Sources from the Zhengzhou Consumers Association said complaints of Ericsson mobile phones are increasing. Major complaints include weak telecommunication signals, poor telecommunication quality, automatic power shut-down and poor battery performance. The association warned consumer's to pay more attention to Ericsson mobile phones.
In wake of its poor services, Ericsson reportedly made a quick response to settle the complaints.
(China Daily)
