Barco has asserted its ClickShare IP rights against Yealink in Europe’s Unified Patent Court, asking the court to prohibit Yealink from further making, selling, and distributing its wireless conferencing solutions.
Barco outlines that the Unified Patent Court (UPC) is a new specialist court that allows for the enforcement of a unitary patent across all its contracting member states.
Barco says the UPC legal proceedings are in addition to the patent infringement lawsuit filed against Yealink in the US in November 2023. The company stated that, as a result of this lawsuit, Yealink admitted to infringing on ClickShare’s intellectual property and subsequently withdrew its WPP30 Presentation Pod from the US market.
Kurt Verheggen, General Counsel at Barco, commented:
Over the years, we’ve built a solid reputation of vigorously defending our IP against companies copying our break-through technologies. With the creation of the UPC in 2023, we can now enforce a patent in its contracting member states and deter copy-cats with an effective legal remedy, just like in the US.”
Barco outlined that in June 2024, the ClickShare IP portfolio achieved a milestone by adding its first unitary patent, which became enforceable in 17 EU member states. This meant that ClickShare’s “innovation in wireless presentation and conferencing (was) now protected by more than 110 patents in major jurisdictions”, as described by Barco.
Barco asserts that Yealink has infringed on some of ClickShare Conference’s patented functionalities. These cited functionalities allow users to host video calls from their own laptops using their preferred video conferencing platforms while utilising the meeting room’s audio and video equipment for a premium wireless Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) experience.
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Yealink’s Challenge
Yealink challenged Barco’s US lawsuit last month, petitioning the United States Patent and Trademark Office to institute “inter partes” reviews of Barco’s patents related to wireless presentation technology.
Yealink claimed that Barco’s patents cover technologies already widely used in the market before Barco applied for its patents. Yealink said that in a previous litigation against Kindermann in the Netherlands, Barco’s European patent (No. EP2756668B) for similar technologies was declared invalid.
Yealink claimed that despite this, Barco continued to enforce its patents and profit from what Yealink called “unreasonable patent royalties”. Yealink added that this included filing a patent infringement lawsuit in the US against Yealink.
Yealink also claimed that its wireless presentation products, the alleged target of Barco’s lawsuit, are “merely optional accessories” in Yealink’s UC&C portfolio, specifically Yealink’s accessory WPP30 Presentation Pod products.
“In response, and out of respect for intellectual property rights, Yealink suspended the sale in the United States of all WPP30 Presentation Pod products in April 2024 and recalled all related products from the US market,” Yealink’s challenge wrote. “At the same time, Yealink continues to protect its, and more importantly, its customers’, legitimate rights by challenging the validity of Barco’s patents before the United States Patent and Trademark Office through Inter Partes review proceedings.”
Yealink says it “aims to protect fair competition in the industry”, arguing that Barco’s actions “compromises fair competition, and thwarts innovation, in the industry”.
