Recapping the first full year of our weekly FRAND news digest, we look back at the deals, decisions and policy developments that generated the most interest from our audience of SEP market makers

Every Monday, Sisvel puts together a digest of the previous week’s most important SEP-related stories and sends it to our free email list as a service to the FRAND community. In its first full calendar year, the readership has grown beyond Sisvel clients and partners to include a wide range of other patent owners and implementers, as well as government officials and private practice lawyers.

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Putting together the weekly newsletter has been a helpful process for us, and we hope the result is a useful resource for you.

It has been interesting to see what resonates with our audience the most, driving opens, reads and clicks. To mark the end of 2025, we dug into the metrics to identify which stories featured in the newsletter drove the greatest level of interest. The result is a good encapsulation of the year that was in FRAND.

Note: We have excluded Sisvel-related developments, which will be highlighted in a separate post.

January: Trump’s day one USPTO appointment

The Trump administration surprised many with the unprecedented swearing-in of an acting USPTO chief on day one of the administration. The appointment of Coke Morgan Stewart, we wrote, “seems to have signalled a direction of travel, both in terms of the importance it attaches to IP and the stance it will take in favour of strong patent rights”.

This was borne out by subsequent developments. Stewart enjoyed the backing to pursue significant initiatives during her interim leadership, and the directorship of John Squires has brought seismic shifts, largely in the direction of strengthened patent rights.

February: SEP regulation withdrawn

The European Commission’s decision to withdraw the SEP regulation caught many by surprise, although it was becoming clear that the legislation was struggling to attract strong support from member states in the Council. “Now there is a window to craft a way forward all find reasonable,” we wrote at the time. “By pressing the pause button, the Commission has created space for pragmatism, common sense and balance to prevail.”

The reference to a pause button was apt. With the European Parliament now taking the Commission to court over its decision, this remains a developing story.

March: Bombshell English Court of Appeal rulings

The UK Court of Appeal’s ruling Ericsson had breached obligations of good faith to Lenovo by seeking injunctions in several jurisdictions, and its subsequent branding of the Swedish firm as an ‘unwilling licensor’, sent a jolt through the global SEP licensing market. Though the two parties settled their dispute later in the year, the UK interim licence remedy has remained a subject of controversy.

The same court handed a defeat to Tesla in the same month, holding 2-1 that UK judges could not set a global FRAND royalty rate for the Avanci 5G auto programme because courts lack the jurisdiction to do so. That decision is set to be reviewed by the UK Supreme Court.

April: Fortress’ big 4G-5G play

Readers took a keen interest in the news that Fortress investment Group affiliates had scooped up thousands of patents from Shanghai Langbo. The firm is a sophisticated player in the IP market, and the transaction underlined increased interest in SEPs from financial investors. That is a theme to continue watching into the new year.May: Apple hit with $700m damage award

May: Apple hit with $700m damage award

Major damages awards always garner attention, as does IP news involving Apple. The fact that this nine-digit sum was handed down in favour of PanOptis by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, overturning a first instance decision that had heavily favoured the iPhone giant, made it particularly noteworthy, as did the fact that Birss LJ and Arnold LJ, the UK's two most experienced FRAND/SEP judges, were on the panel. In November, the UK Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from Apple, setting up a potential landmark clash for 2026.

June: UPC issues anti-antisuit injunction

InterDigital obtained a UPC anti-antisuit injunction against Disney, the first such order to issue from the local division in Mannheim. This came after the media and entertainment giant asked a US court to prevent InterDigital’s possible enforcement of a sales ban in Brazil. It was just one of many developments in 2025 to underline the growing complexity of cross-border SEP litigation.

July: Major German FRAND intervention

A German litigation dispute between ZTE and Samsung provided the occasion for respected Munich-based Judge Oliver Schön to issue detailed guidance on many aspects of SEP-related litigation. The 16-page document addressed the nature of FRAND, royalty calculations, the threat of litigation to secure deals, willingness/unwillingness and interim licences. The news of this publication attracted wide interest from readers because it offered the rare window into the FRAND philosophy of a key German jurist.

August: Pool rate-setting case heads to Fed Circuit

The prospect of courts weighing in on pool royalty rates was raised not just in the UK case involving Tesla and Avanci, but also in a US lawsuit featuring Access Advance and Roku. A Massachusetts federal district judge ruled in July that he had no jurisdiction to make such a determination and dismissed a case asking him to do so. News that Roku had appealed this decision to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit garnered significant interest from our community, which will watch this proceeding closely.

September: DoJ lawyer wades in on FRAND

Eager for insights into the new US administration’s approach to issues at the intersection of SEPs and antitrust, readers pored over remarks made by Dina Kallay, deputy attorney general in the DoJ antitrust division, at a speaking appearance in New York. Kallay echoed the principles laid down during the first Trump administration, saying that “implementer hold-out poses a more serious threat to innovation than innovator hold-up” and pointing to the enormous success of collaborative standards developed under contractual FRAND commitments. Kallay would go on to make further headlines in December for expressing scepticism of the auto industry LNG that has been given a green light by German and EU regulators.

October: IPR revolution at the PTAB

John Squires has made quite an impact since he was sworn in as USPTO Director in September. His agenda for reforming the inter partes review regime has made the market sit up and take notice. In his first public comments in the role, Squires signalled his backing for Coke Morgan Stewart’s changes to discretionary denials, and in October he assumed personal authority over institution decisions rather than delegating it to PTAB panels as had previously been the case. At the same time, he initiated consultation on a ‘one-and-done’ rule package limiting repeat validity challenges.

November: Transsion in the crosshairs

A litigation campaign launched by Ericsson against China-based smartphone maker Transsion in November garnered significant reader interest. The announcement was accompanied by a powerful statement from Ericsson chief patent enforcement officer Robert Earle entitled “Hold out is real and must be stopped.” This laid out the nearly ten years of back-and-forth between the two companies that preceded the decision to litigate. The inclusion of Nigeria in the list of jurisdictions where Ericsson has filed cases further marked this development out as a milestone.

December: UPC asked to set FRAND rate

The UPC featured in many big stories throughout the year – the court continued to attract high-profile SEP cases, flexed its long-arm jurisdiction with injunctions reaching into the UK and Spain and issued an anti-interim licence injunction for the first time. Most recently, the question of whether UPC judges can set FRAND rates has risen to the surface. Patent owners including Sun Patent Trust have asked the court to take steps in that direction, and the matter is set to be considered by the Court of Appeal. This is yet another developing story that could significantly re-draw the global FRAND map in 2026.

There were many other important developments throughout the year, a great number of which involved Sisvel programmes. Stay tuned for our Sisvel year in review, which will be published soon.