Motorola Solutions' Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Hytera Set to Proceed for Trial

Motorola Solutions, Inc. has announced that its patent infringement case against Hytera Communications Corporation Limited of Shenzhen, China in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (the “Illinois District Court”), which was previously stayed pending a decision from the International Trade Commission (ITC), will proceed to trial.

This follows the Illinois District Court’s denial of Hytera’s motion to dismiss on August 12, 2019 and its establishment of a pre-trial calendar, which includes pre-trial milestone and discovery dates, on August 15, 2019.

The Illinois District Court patent infringement lawsuit asserts that Hytera’s two-way radios, base stations, repeaters and dispatch systems are infringing seven patents owned by Motorola Solutions and that Hytera’s “redesigned” i-Series products are infringing four of those patents. This case is separate from Motorola Solutions’ trade secret theft and copyright infringement case against Hytera, which is also pending in the Illinois District Court and is expected to proceed to a jury trial in November 2019.

“We believe Hytera continues to infringe Motorola Solutions’ patents, including with its new i-Series products, in an attempt to illegally profit from our intellectual property,” said Mark Hacker, general counsel and chief administrative officer of Motorola Solutions. “Due to our successful litigation to date, Hytera removed three critical features covered by our patents. With these proprietary technologies removed, we believe the i-Series is already a vastly inferior product that is unable to meet customers’ business and mission-critical needs. We look forward to building on our success in holding Hytera accountable for its additional infringement with this case.”

Hytera released the i-Series in response to the United States ITC’s January 2019 importation ban and cease-and-desist orders that prevent Hytera from importing products into the United States that use three Motorola Solutions’ patents: U.S. Patent Nos. 7,369,869; 7,729,701; and 8,279,991. Importantly for customers and end-users, because Hytera removed the features covered by those patents, its i-Series products lack significant and innovative features that enable safety, speed and efficiency in mission-critical communications.

The seven patents at issue in the Illinois District Court patent infringement case include the three patents that were the subject of the ITC decision, as well as Motorola Solutions’ U.S. Patent Nos. 6,591,111; 8,032,169; 8,116,284; and 9,099,972. Most recently, in May 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office upheld the validity of Motorola Solutions’ U.S. Patent Nos. 6,591,111; 7,369,869; 8,116,284; and 8,279,991 against challenges raised by Hytera.

Collectively, Motorola Solutions’ patents at the center of the Illinois District Court patent infringement case enable important functionality to ensure reliable, high-quality communications. Specifically, these patents cover key functions, including techniques to:

•Efficiently use Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) channels by allowing devices to temporarily select a different timeslot when the default timeslot is busy;
•Adaptively increase speaker volume in the presence of loud ambient noise;
•Arbitrate between different devices simultaneously requesting to access a radio channel in a system with multiple repeaters; and
•Enable efficient communications between independent radio networks for group calls.