German Court of Appeals Sides with Hytera over Patent Case

The Court of Appeals Düsseldorf in Germany has reversed the decision of the lower court and ruled in favour of professional communications technologies and solutions provider Hytera and its subsidiary HMF Smart Solutions, dismissing its patent infringement proceedings filed by Motorola Solutions back in 2017 and 2018.

The Court of Appeals said the patent-in-suit was not infringed by Hytera and HMF.

The Court of Appeals also ordered Motorola Solutions to pay the costs of the court proceedings in the first and second instances and the decision is preliminarily enforceable for Hytera and HMF, Hytera said in a press statement.

In 2017, Motorola Solutions filed a complaint alleging infringement of its European patent EP 2 342 851 B1 by Hytera’s Pseudo-Trunking/TDMA direct mode/TX-none radio functionality.

The complaint was initially filed against HMF (“Hytera Mobilfunk GmbH” back then).

After Hytera joined the proceedings, Motorola added a new complaint against Hytera, resulting in two parallel proceedings.

The Regional Court Düsseldorf found infringement of MSI’s patent in the first instance decisions but Hytera and HMF appealed the decision.

According to reports, the Regional Court ruled that Motorola was entitled to monetary remedies including extra damages for copyright infringement.

The Regional Court said Hytera violated Motorola Solutions’ right. The damage was “flagrant and constituted a serious industrial theft” of its proprietary source code.

Court of Appeals Düsseldorf reversed the Regional Court’s decision and found the patent-in-suit was not infringed and dismissed Motorola’s complaints.