Orange v HMD Global (CFI, 19 August 2026)

Dhenne Avocats · 4 October 2026

Our analysis

Facts and procedure

Orange, proprietor of European patent 2 345 029 on the decoding of an audio signal combining transform coding and CELP coding, sued HMD Global on 31 March 2025 before the Paris local division. HMD filed its statement of defence with a counterclaim for revocation on 8 September 2025. Orange replied on 17 November 2025 with nine auxiliary requests. At the hearing of 8 July 2026 HMD made its counterclaim conditional on a finding of infringement, which the parties confirmed on 17 July 2026.

Question

May a counterclaim for revocation be made conditional on a finding of infringement, and do handsets implementing the USAC standard fall within claims 1 and 6.

Decision

The Paris local division allows the conditional counterclaim and therefore examines infringement before validity. Construing the claims in the light of the description along the lines set by the Court of Appeal, it holds that the invention requires a temporal overlap supplying the CELP decoder with alias-free samples without transmitting any additional information. Orange does not establish that the decoding path it relies on is actually followed under the USAC standard, which mandates the FAC mechanism on the transition from the frequency domain to ACELP. That mechanism rests on additional corrective information foreign to the teaching of the patent. The infringement action is dismissed and Orange bears the costs in accordance with the parties’ agreement.

Key points for practice

• A counterclaim for revocation may be filed conditionally: the court then rules on infringement first and leaves validity undecided (paragraphs 1 and 7).
• The burden of proving each claim feature rests on the claimant, including where infringement is inferred from compliance with a standard (paragraph 74).
• Standard-based evidence requires identifying a mandatory decoding path. A merely possible path does not suffice where the standard imposes another mechanism (paragraphs 75 to 85).
• The division ties claim construction to the problem the patent says it solves: a standardised solution transmitting additional corrective information departs from the claimed teaching (paragraphs 86 to 95).
• Practical point: in standard-related litigation, document section by section that the operating mode relied on is mandatory, not merely technically available.

Provisions applied

European Patent Convention

Art. 69 and its Protocol on interpretation

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court

Art. 33(1)(a), Art. 69

Rules of Procedure

Rules 5, 19 and 118.5

Case law cited

10x Genomics v NanoString, Court of Appeal, 26 February 2024, SES-imagotag v Hanshow, Court of Appeal, 13 May 2024, Meril, Court of Appeal, 25 November 2025, Emboline v AorticLab, Court of Appeal, 16 July 2026

Summary prepared by Dhenne Avocats from the decision and the official registry, consulted on 4 October 2026. It is no substitute for reading the decision.