IDC v Lenovo has landed!

With a bang, the hotly anticipated FRAND judgment in InterDigital Corporation v Lenovo was handed down at 10:30 this morning. The judgment is expected to cover a whole host of important points of FRAND jurisprudence, such as what amounts to a relevant comparable and just how important a top-down analysis is to the English court

As I, along with many other interested practitioners, digest this behemoth (it weighs in at a cool 225 pages), here are Mr Justice Mellor's key conclusions (see below). There is also a general sense (subject to reading the judgment) that Lenovo has come out of this in the better position, with the court's ultimate finding of a lump sum of $138.7m appearing to be closer to Lenovo's pre-trial offer ($80m) than InterDigital's (over $330m). As ever though, the devil is in the detail (yet to be read).

For those interested in actual rates, Mr Justice Mellor confirms (at paragraph 813) that the "the willing licensor and willing licensee would agree a single per unit rate which would reflect all the considerations I have discussed above" and that that rate is $0.175 per cellular unit. That rate is then applied to Lenovo's sales data (going back further than the UK limitation period - another interesting conclusion) to reach yield the lump sum payment of $138.7m.

Bristows will be providing further commentary in due course, and no doubt I will be having a FRANDly Chat with a guest co-host, so watch this space!