Every smartphone sold in India relies on a small set of technologies that nobody owns outright in the ordinary sense. The AMR speech codec that makes voice calls intelligible across a congested spectrum. The EDGE protocols that carry data when 3G and 4G are unavailable. The 3G features that underpin mobile broadband. These are not proprietary features a manufacturer can choose to skip. They are part of the standards that define what a cellular handset is, agreed upon by international bodies so that every device can talk to every network everywhere in the world.

The patents that cover these technologies are called Standard-Essential Patents, and their holders face a structural tension that has no clean resolution. If they charge whatever the market will bear, implementers cannot build compliant devices and the standard fails. If they receive nothing, the incentive to invest in standards research evaporates. The international solution is the FRAND commitment: when a patent holder contributes technology to a standard, it promises to license on terms that are Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory. The promise is easy to state and notoriously difficult to price.

For a decade, Indian courts were not in the business of pricing it. They granted interim injunctions and issued procedural orders, but no court had ever sat through a full trial on what a FRAND rate in India should actually be. Justice Amit Bansal's 476-page judgment in Ericsson v. Lava is the first to do so — and the result will define how this problem is solved in India for years to come.

The Anatomy of a Decade-Long Standoff

Ericsson filed suit in 2015, asserting eight patents covering the precise technologies that no handset maker can avoid: AMR codec, EDGE, and 3G. Lava, one of the larger Indian handset brands, had been manufacturing and selling GSM and 3G phones throughout this period. What it had not done was sign a licence.

The record that emerged at trial was not a picture of good-faith negotiation that had reached an honest impasse. Ericsson sent offers. Lava raised queries. Responses were delayed. Counter-offers were never made. The court found that Lava had received the offers, understood them, and chosen a strategy of non-engagement that served a clear commercial purpose: avoid paying for technology you are already using for as long as the legal system allows you to.

That finding is the axis on which the entire judgment turns. The FRAND framework was designed to prevent SEP holders from extracting monopoly rents. It was not designed to allow implementers to use patented technology indefinitely while pretending to negotiate. The court drew the distinction crisply: a party that engages in good faith, proposes alternatives, makes counter-offers, and simply cannot agree on a number retains its FRAND defence. A party that never intends to conclude a licence forfeits it.

How the Court Calculated the Number

Setting the rate was the harder task. Ericsson's existing licence portfolio — agreements with other Indian manufacturers, and a Global Patent Licensing Agreement — gave the court a body of comparable transactions to work with. The exercise was not mechanical. The court had to assess whether differences in negotiating power, portfolio scope, and timing made those comparables reliable anchors, and adjust accordingly.

Six of the eight patents survived Lava's revocation challenge intact. One (IN 203034) was revoked. One survived in modified form. The damages calculation reflected the actual portfolio that Lava should have been licensing — not the full suite Ericsson initially asserted — and was calibrated against the volume of infringing handsets sold over the relevant period.

The result: Rs.244,07,63,990 — approximately Rs.244 crore, or USD 29.9 million at prevailing rates — together with interest at five percent from the date of judgment. By a considerable margin, it is the largest damages award in the history of Indian patent litigation.

What the Judgment Changes

The significance of the ruling is not primarily in the number. It is in the demonstrated willingness of an Indian court to do the rate-setting work itself, on a full evidentiary record, with economic analysis of comparable licences, after a contested trial at which both parties presented their best case.

Before this judgment, an SEP holder pursuing an Indian implementer faced a practical ceiling. Interim injunctions could be sought, but a final determination of the FRAND rate — and the damages for refusing to pay it — required a court willing to wade into complex economic analysis across hundreds of pages of evidence. The answer, after twelve years of litigation, is emphatically yes.

The Takeaway

For SEP holders with Indian exposure, the message is direct: Indian courts will now do the rate-setting work, and the damages available at the end of a successful trial are commercially significant. The patience required to reach a final determination is real, but the destination now has a known shape.

For implementers — Indian handset brands, device manufacturers, anyone building on cellular standards — the lesson from Lava's experience is that delay is not a strategy. It is evidence. The record of negotiation, or the absence of one, will be scrutinised. An implementer that never makes a counter-offer, never genuinely engages, and simply uses the technology while the litigation proceeds has, on the Delhi High Court's analysis, forfeited the very protection FRAND was designed to provide.

The price of standard-essential technology in India is no longer a matter for indefinite deferral. It is a number a court is prepared to calculate.