PATENT TUSSLE: Philips locks horns with T-Series

This interesting article which appeared in Economic Time on 30th August 2006 deals with a licensing issues. Though on the face of it, the issue seems more of breach of trust, but it seems that T-Series is also raised the issue of challenging some of the patents of Phillips. Read On!!-

MUMBAI: Consumer electronics heavyweight, Royal Philips Electronics of Netherlands, and Indian music major T-Series have locked horns over royalty payments and non-compliance issues for a couple of patent license agreements.

The companies had signed the patent agreements for VCDs and CDs in ’03 and for DVD players & DVD-ROM players in November ’05. While Philips Netherlands has charged T-series of non-payment of royalty on all the three, Super Cassettes Industries, which owns the T-Series brand, is planning to petition the Delhi High Court.

T-Series will challenge Philips’s patent rights for some of the components being used. When contacted by ET, Philips officials said, “The major conflict with Super Cassettes is over a patent agreement for DVDs signed by one of their executive directors in November ’05. Sometime in December ’05-January ’06, they requested us to return our copy of the agreements stating that it needed to be countersigned by their managing director. In all fairness, we returned our copy to them, requesting them to return it after having it countersigned by their MD.

Instead of the agreement, we received a lawyer’s notice in March’ 06 denying that the agreement was ever signed. “Subsequently, they returned our copy of the agreements after cancelling the signatures. We have all documentary proof in writing to prove that the documents have been signed by Super Cassettes,” he pointed out.

Super Cassettes officials refrained from offering any official comments despite repeated attempts by ET. “Not all the components being used by Philips are novel. Some of them are in the general category. Yet Philips is taking royalties for them,” a top official from Super Cassettes said on condition of anonymity.

Philips Electronics, NV, Sony, Pioneer and LG Electronics have started a joint patent license programme which covers essential patents for DVD-Video and DVD-ROM. Philips and their partners in these license programmes own a number of patents and have a number of patent applications pending relevant to DVD systems, which are licensed by Philips to DVD disc and player/recorder manufacturers.

By acquiring licenses from Philips under one of the DVD patent license programmes, manufacturers will be allowed to use the patents of Philips and their partners for the relevant DVD products.

Samsung currently imports its DVD requirements from its parent company in Korea who pays the royalty. LG imports partially from Korea and also sources it locally in India for which it pays royalty to Philips Netherlands.

Super Cassettes now has TVs, DVDs and VCDs in its product portfolio. The DVD market totals about 4m units with Philips claiming to be the brand leader, with 21% share followed by Onida and LG. Much of the market is also taken up by regional brands.

Source- Economic times -KALA VIJAYRAGHAVAN AND RASHMI PRATAP TIMES NEWS NETWORK
[ WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2006 01:26:41 AM]