From Assumption to Proof: The Delhi High Court’s Stance on SEP Enforcement in Bansal v Philips

On May 18, 2026, a Division Bench comprising Justices C. Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla of the Delhi High Court pronounced their verdict in K.K. Bansal v Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV, thereby overruling the 2018 ruling made in Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. v Rajesh Bansal Trading. The single‑judge decision of Justice Mukta Gupta had held that two small‑scale DVD‑player manufacturers based in Haridwar, Mangalam Technology and Bhagirathi Electronics, had infringed a standard‑essential patent (SEP) owned by Philips.

Philips had claimed that Indian Patent IN‑184753, protecting a “decoding device” within DVD players, was essential to the DVD Forum’s playback standard. It therefore sued Rajesh Bansal, sole proprietor of Mangalam Technology, and Bhagirathi Electronics, two small‑scale DVD‑player manufacturers based in Haridwar, for selling unlicensed DVD players, relying on essentiality certificates and a technical affidavit to establish infringement. These defendants were collectively referred to as “the Bansals” in the 2018 single‑judge ruling, which rejected their exhaustion defence, ordered them to pay a per‑unit royalty on each DVD player, and imposed punitive damages.

The Bansals had argued that their printed circuit boards (PCBs) were sourced from Shuntak (HK) Trading Company and Sheen Land Corporation, authorised distributors of MediaTek, that MediaTek was licensed to sell the patented components, and that this supply chain triggered patent exhaustion under Section 107A(b) of the Patents Act, 1970. In the 2026 Division Bench appeal, K.K. Bansal and Rajesh Bansal again appeared as appellants, and the court ultimately accepted the exhaustion and evidentiary objections, setting aside the earlier decree.

The Division Bench distilled the dispute into five core questions: (i) Was the suit patent, properly interpreted, a product patent or a method patent? (ii) Had Philips proved essentiality, in the sense that its patent was compliant with the DVD Forum standard; (iii) Had Philips established infringement, whether by direct or indirect evidence? (iv) Did the 2003 amendment to Section 107A(b) of the Patents Act limit Philips’ rights in light of the Bansals’ supply chain; and (v) Had Philips shown that the royalty it claimed was FRAND, and on what evidential basis that calculation rested?

The Court’s response: a strict evidentiary template

The court found that, in terms of application of Section 10(4)(c) of the Patents Act, which confines protection to the invention as claimed, the patent pertained to a product patent found in a chip or PCB instead of the DVD player as such, a fact confirmed by, at the time of being cross-examined, Philips’ own witness.

In terms of essentiality, the court chose to follow its own Division Bench’s previous framework laid down in Intex Technologies (India) Ltd v Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, which states that the assertion of essentiality should be supported by claim charts mapping a patent against the relevant standard. There were no such charts produced by Philips. Its certificates of essentiality were taken to be expert opinion under Section 45 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, and excluded as there was no witness from the issuing entity examined. As essentiality was not proved, both means of infringement failed – direct (mapping of the product to the claim) and indirect (transitivity).

In its stance on exhaustion, the Bench held that the pre‑2003 requirement for sellers, from whom the implementer purchased the patented products, to obtain the patent holder’s authorisation before selling those products no longer applies after the 2003 amendment to Section 107A(b) of the Patents Act. This provision asks only whether the seller is legally authorized to sell the products. On the uncontested evidence regarding the Bansals’ MediaTek‑based supply chain, the Court therefore found that Philips had lost its exclusivity (judgment, para 169(xiii)).

As regards FRAND, the Court held that the single judge’s conclusions were “unsupported by any evidence whatsoever” (para 169(xiv)), because Philips had not produced even a single licence agreement before the trial judge, despite its own witness confirming that such agreements existed. The Court also rejected Philips’ royalty claim insofar as it was calculated on the value of the entire DVD player, even though the patent protected only the decoding‑chip technology (para 169(xv)), and it set aside the punitive damages awarded against Rajesh Bansal, which had been imposed solely on the basis of his former employment with Philips (para 169(xvi)).

Stakeholder perspective

From the perspective of SEP owners, the ruling represents a clear tightening of evidentiary standards: essentiality certificates must be supported by oral evidence from witnesses; technical affidavits likewise require the authors to be examined; and FRAND claims must be substantiated by the production of actual comparable licence agreements.

By contrast, the judgment is decidedly favourable to implementers, and especially to component suppliers. The Court interprets Section 107A(b) to protect even suppliers who lack a direct authorisation from the patentee, provided that they can show, through properly kept documentation, that they purchased and resold patented components from entities that were themselves legally authorised to sell them.

The Delhi High Court’s insistence on rigorous proof at the litigation stage sits alongside, but does not replicate, the framework developed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in Huawei v ZTE, which imposes a sequence of pre‑litigation obligations on SEP holders and implementers, centred on good‑faith negotiation before any request for injunctive relief. Put differently, Huawei v ZTE structures the parties’ conduct in the negotiation phase by prescribing when an injunction may be sought without abusing a dominant position, whereas Bansal v Philips structures the proof phase, by specifying what evidence SEP owners must adduce at trial to establish essentiality, infringement and FRAND royalty claims.

Conclusion

Bansal v Philips marks an important development in India’s SEP jurisprudence because it insists that both essentiality and FRAND compliance must be established through credible evidentiary material, rather than by bare assertion or reliance on untested expert opinion. The judgment thereby pushes SEP holders towards more robust litigation preparedness: they must assemble claim charts, produce licence agreements and ensure that technical and economic experts are available for cross‑examination before commencing suit.

At the same time, this precedent incentivises implementers to maintain comprehensive records of their licensing arrangements and supply chains, knowing that such documentation can be decisive in proving exhaustion and in resisting unsupported royalty claims. Although the decision does not settle a substantive methodology for calculating FRAND royalty rates, it lays down a procedural template that future Indian courts are likely to follow in SEP disputes, particularly as regards proof of essentiality, exhaustion and comparables. By emphasising evidentiary rigour at trial and a measure of procedural fairness between patentees and implementers, the ruling enhances legal certainty while seeking to preserve a workable balance between the protection of innovation and non‑discriminatory access to standardised technologies in downstream markets.