Legal battle between Ericsson and Xiaomi likely to end after Xiaomi agrees to return 100,000 banned Redmi Note 3G Phones from India
On Monday, in a relief to Xiaomi, the Delhi High Court on Monday allowed the Chinese smartphone maker to return its Redmi Note 3G handsets on whose sale has been banned in India due to a patent dispute filed by Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson.
Justice Mukta Gupta who was on the vacation bench finalized this judgement, and asked Xiaomi to return over 100,000 3G handsets to their point of origin in Hong Kong, after Swedish telecom Ericsson agreed to the arrangement.
The Court also directed Xiaomi to keep a proper inventory of the handsets, which are currently lying unused with Flipkart through which the Chinese company sells its phones under an exclusive arrangement.
Advocate Ajit Warrier, appearing on behalf of the Chinese firm, said its phones like Redmi Note, which run on a MediaTek processor, have been forbidden from sale in India by the high court. He further said that the company was only allowed by the court to sell its Qualcomm chipset-based phones. As a result, the other variety of phones are lying unused with Flipkart.
Redmi 1S, Mi 3, Mi 4 and Mi 4i which are equipped with Qualcomm chips are also very popular brands of Xiaomi.
The Delhi High Court in December 2014 had asked Xiaomi to stop selling of all their mobile phones. However, later Xiaomi filed a plea, and proved that only their Redmi 3G phones are using the Media Tek chip.
The legal battle between Ericsson and Xiaomi is expected to come to an end with Xiaomi agreeing to the decision of returning the banned 3G phones to Hong Kong.