LG

SEOUL, Dec. 2, 2021 — LG Electronics (LG) has signed an agreement to license all of its LTE standard essential patents (SEP) to Tinno Mobile, the Chinese parent company of European smartphone brand Wiko. The license covers all Wiko-branded phones sold by Tinno Mobile worldwide.
 
The recently completed arrangement is a strategic victory for LG, which filed three separate suits against Wiko in 2018 for infringing on its LTE SEPs. All cases were ruled in LG’s favor the following year, as were the two subsequent appeals filed by Wiko. The two companies were set to meet again in court this month, with LG seeking a sales ban on Wiko products in Germany, but came to an agreement three days before the new trial was set to begin.
 
LG has made protecting its intellectual property a key component of its business strategy in the era of mobility. As part of this broad strategy LG also filed legal action against TCL in 2019 for violating its intellectual property. Ruled in favor of LG earlier this year, the court granted a ban in Germany on the sale of TCL products containing LG technologies in addition to recall and destruction of TCL devices that had already been sold.
 
“Our agreement with Tinno Mobile is a positive outcome for all parties involved and will ultimately lead to better user experiences for consumers worldwide,” said Cho Hwi-jae, vice president and head of LG’s Intellectual Property Center. “Protecting our intellectual property is important to the many employees at LG who have invested countless hours and considerable efforts to developing the technology that improve our customers’ lives. LG is committed to licensing its standard essential patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms for the benefit of consumers everywhere.”
 
LG is already at work securing leadership in the next generation of mobile network technology, 6G, which is expected to be commercialized later this decade. In partnership with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea’s foremost research university, LG established the LG-KAIST 6G Research Center in 2019 and is working closely with Keysight Technologies to further enhance its 6G core capabilities. Earlier this year LG achieved a groundbreaking milestone in 6G development at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) in Berlin with the successful transmission of wireless 6G terahertz (THz) data over a distance of more than 100 meters outdoors.