The UK Supreme Court is hearing Apple’s appeal from June 29 to July 1, 2026 in a dispute over FRAND terms for a global licence to Optis patents declared essential to ETSI mobile telecommunications standards.
The case follows a 2025 Court of Appeal ruling that replaced a first-instance award of $56.43 million plus interest with a per-device royalty of $0.15, producing a lump-sum licence payment of $502 million excluding interest for Apple sales from 2013 to 2027.
The Supreme Court said the appeal will address the approach UK courts should use when setting fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms for global portfolio licences of standard-essential patents. It will also consider whether the Court of Appeal should have fixed the rate itself rather than sending the issue back, how royalties on past sales should be treated, and how UK FRAND rulings should interact with related foreign patent proceedings.
Court records state that earlier technical trials found all asserted patents valid, with six of seven found essential and infringed. Optis sued Apple in London in 2019 over patents it says are essential to standards including 4G, and the dispute concerns Apple products including iPhones and iPads. The appeal is being watched across the standards-licensing market, with multiple industry interveners participating.