Tesla v InterDigital [2026] UKSC 27 establishes that the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction to declare whether the terms offered for a licence to a pool of standard essential patents are FRAND, at the request of an implementer, even where the licence is offered by a platform administrator that owns no patents and gave no FRAND undertaking of its own. A unanimous Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal on 27 July 2026.
What did the Supreme Court decide in Tesla v InterDigital?
In a judgment delivered jointly by Lord Hamblen and Lord Kitchin, with which Lord Sales, Lord Briggs and Lord Burrows agreed, the court held that the FRAND commitment given to ETSI under its IPR Policy does not fall away when a patentee chooses to license its declared-essential patents jointly through a pool or platform. That conclusion matters because Avanci, the administrator of the 5G vehicle platform at the centre of the dispute, owns no standard essential patents itself and has given no undertaking to any standards body. The court found a serious issue to be tried on whether the only FRAND licence available to Tesla in respect of InterDigital’s UK patents is a global platform licence at a FRAND rate, and a real prospect that the declarations Tesla seeks would serve a useful purpose. On essentially every point the justices adopted the dissenting analysis of Arnold LJ below.
Commercial practice did much of the work. The court noted that most licensors on the Avanci 5G platform rely on the platform licence as the means of meeting their FRAND obligation, and that requiring an implementer to negotiate bilateral licences with every one of the dozens of participating patentees would be impractical to the point of unreality. Refusing declaratory relief would leave pool and platform rates beyond the scrutiny of any court, which in the justices’ view would seriously undermine the effectiveness of the FRAND regime itself.
How did the dispute reach London?
Tesla issued proceedings in December 2023 against InterDigital, a major licensor to the Avanci 5G platform, and against Avanci as administrator. Its central complaint is that the platform’s rate of $32 per vehicle for a global 5G licence is not FRAND, and it seeks declarations to that effect together with a determination of what terms would be. Fancourt J accepted that it was obviously of interest to implementers to know whether Avanci’s non-negotiable terms are FRAND, yet held that the English courts had no jurisdiction to decide the question. The Court of Appeal agreed by a majority of two to one, Phillips and Whipple LJJ dismissing the appeal and Arnold LJ dissenting in a judgment that has now been vindicated at the highest level.
Why did the lower courts refuse jurisdiction?
The objections were structural rather than technical. Avanci has made no FRAND commitment, so there was said to be no obligation for the court to enforce against it, and a declaration about a voluntary platform rate was characterised as serving no useful purpose. The Supreme Court disagreed on both fronts. The patentees behind the platform remain bound by their individual commitments to ETSI, and those commitments reach the joint offer they choose to make through their chosen intermediary. Avanci, far from being a stranger to the dispute, was described as the essential party to any court determination of a platform rate, and the court saw no procedural unfairness in granting declarations in proceedings to which both the administrator and a representative licensor are parties.
Where does this leave service out and forum challenges?
Two procedural holdings will travel well beyond FRAND work. First, the licensing claims against InterDigital were validly served under CPR 63.14(2), which permits service at the address registered for the patent at the UK Intellectual Property Office, because a claim seeking a licence that would defend an infringement action “relates to” the registered right. Secondly, the court endorsed the Vestel v Access Advance line of authority holding that the subject matter of a claim for a FRAND licence of UK patents remains the UK patents even where the only compliant licence would be global, so the claims satisfied both Gateway 3 and Gateway 11 for service out of the jurisdiction. Bahrain-style forum battles will also take note of the final strand: the justices upheld Arnold LJ’s conclusion that the Delaware Court of Chancery was not an available alternative forum, since a US court would be unlikely to adjudicate FRAND terms for foreign patents. Readers tracking the gateways more generally can compare the Court of Appeal’s recent approach in Sucden v TMT Metals and our guide to serving proceedings out of the jurisdiction.
The decision keeps London open as a venue for global FRAND rate-setting where standard essential patents are licensed through pools, and it hands implementers a proactive remedy that no other court has yet offered at pool level. In-house teams negotiating with Avanci or comparable platforms now know that a take-it-or-leave-it rate can be tested in the English courts, while SEP holders must assume that a platform rate is no longer beyond judicial scrutiny. The service and forum holdings will shape strategy in implementer-led claims under Gateway 11 for years.
What happens next?
Jurisdiction is established, not the merits. The case returns to the Patents Court for a trial of whether the $32 per vehicle rate is in fact FRAND, and if not, what rate would be, in what is likely to become the first judicial determination of a pool-level rate anywhere in the world. The judgment was one of two commercial decisions handed down by the Supreme Court on 27 July, both first noted in our roundup of the 27 July hand-downs, and its companion on state immunity is covered separately today. The full case detail, including the judgment and press summary, is on the Supreme Court’s case page, and the service provisions applied are in CPR Part 63.