The EU Court of Justice AG Wathelet states that holding a standard essential patent does not mean a company is dominant (Huawei / ZTE)

The Reference On 5 April 2013, the Landgericht Düsseldorf referred questions relating to injunctive relief over standard-essential patents (“SEPs”) to the Court of Justice (“CJEU”) in connection with a patent dispute between Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd (“Huawei”) and ZTE Corp., ZTE Deutschland GmbH (“ZTE”) relating to an alleged infringement by ZTE of a patent owned by Huawei and declared to be essential in connection with the LTE standard. As the Advocate General (“AG”) put it in his 20 November Opinion, the CJEU “is called for the first time to answer whether seeking an injunction by the holder of SEP, committed to grant licenses on FRAND [fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory] terms, against a candidate-licensee may amount to an abuse of dominant position and which conditions