Hytera Communications Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Hytera”) announced on September 4 that it had received a notice from the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, regarding the payment method and related matters of the license fee after the first-instance judgment of the patent and trade secret infringement lawsuit between the company and MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS INC. (referred to as “Motorola”) and Motorola Malaysia.

Since 2017, Hytera and Motorola have been involved in a lawsuit that resulted in a first-instance verdict, which ordered Hytera and its wholly-owned subsidiary to pay Motorola $345.76 million in compensatory damages and $418.8 million in punitive damages, totaling $764.56 million.

Hytera did not accept the first-instance judgment and the post-trial judgment, and has appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

The announcement showed that recently, the first-instance court found that Hytera’s original submission of pledging its subsidiary’s equity did not meet the license fee security requirements. At present, Hytera has provided license fee security in cash to a co-managed account supervised by the court as required by the first-instance court. The license fee security covers Hytera’s products involved in the case sold from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2022, with a security amount of about $56 million.

It is reported that the license fee range only involves Hytera’s old DMR products, and the new H series products are not affected by the lawsuit and do not need to pay license fees. Since Hytera launched its H series products in 2021, the company’s narrowband products have been mainly based on the H series, which have achieved qualitative improvements in terms of lightness, standby time, wireless indicators, etc., and have been widely welcomed by customers.

Hytera said in its research summary that in the future, the company will further launch next-generation products, using lighter and higher-level chips, and will build stronger product capabilities with a complete solution. The performance and quality will continue to improve.

Hytera announced that at present, the company’s production and operation are normal, and this judgment will not have a significant impact on the company’s current business and normal production and operation. There is significant uncertainty in the progress of subsequent appeals and final judgments. The company will actively respond with legal means and factual basis, and resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.