Transsion First Invalidates InterDigital 4G Patent in China
August 12, 2026
On June 1, 2026, PRIP reported that Transsion had filed invalidation challenges against six patents of Ericsson and InterDigital at the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) (Substack, June 1, 2026). As Transsion subsequently settled with Ericsson, the dispute in China narrowed to Transsion's continued challenges against InterDigital patents. PRIP's search revealed that Transsion had filed invalidation petitions against four InterDigital Chinese patents. On July 30, the CNIPA issued its first decision among these cases, finding InterDigital's patent ZL2014100424846 invalid due to lack of inventiveness.
Despite InterDigital's amendment on June 8, 2026, which added features from dependent claims 4‑5 to claim 1 and from claims 9‑10 to claim 6, the panel still maintained its finding of lack of inventive step for the patent.
The panel primarily based its finding on the 3GPP document cited as Evidence 3, which disclosed most of the technical features of the patent claims. The remaining features would have been obvious to a person skilled in the art. Although InterDigital further argued that there were other distinguishing technical features between the patent and Evidence 3, such arguments did not gain support from the panel.
Evidence 3: 3GPP Document R2‑061920 and its translation. The petitioner asserts that its publication date is 22 June 2006.
This is the first case among Transsion's invalidation challenges in China to have received a decision on the merits. Previously, following a settlement with Ericsson, the cases challenging Ericsson were successively closed from July 16 to July 22.
Although Transsion prevailed in the first round, the situation becomes considerably more challenging when it comes to the other three InterDigital Chinese patents. Those patents were previously achallenged by Lenovo, Huawei, and OPPO, but all three challenges ended in partial invalidation.
