Morocco’s First SEP Judgment

A fast, in-absentia decision that still reached the merits 
The most striking feature of this judgment is simply how quickly it arrived. Ericsson filed its complaint on 18 December 2025; the case was placed on the docket for several hearings, and at the final one, held on 29 June 2026, counsel for the defendants failed to appear despite having been duly notified. The court declared the case ready for judgment, reserved it for deliberation, and rendered a full decision rather than a bare default judgment. For a first-of-its-kind SEP case in a jurisdiction with no real track record in this space, that is a genuinely encouraging sign: the court was willing to engage substantively with a fairly technical dispute on a compressed timeline, and it did so without being derailed by the defendants’ non-appearance or by numerous formalistic objections against the complaint. 

The infringement case: essentiality plus a corroborating bailiff report 
Ericsson’s theory of infringement rested on two pillars. First, and centrally, it argued that the four patents-in-suit are essential to the 3GPP 4G and 5G standards, such that any standard-compliant handset necessarily practices them. No separate technical showing of use in a specific accused product should, in principle, be required once essentiality is established. Second, it provided concrete, if modest, factual corroboration that TECNO indeed uses 4G and 5G technology: a bailiff-verified purchase of TECNO handsets in Morocco confirmed that the phones actually sold in the Moroccan market advertise and support 4G and 5G connectivity. The court accepted this framework, and ruled on infringement on the basis of that factual background. 

Most of the defense was focused on narrow procedural arguments 
A large share of the defendants’ brief was devoted to procedural and formalistic objections to the complaint. TECNO and Transsion argued that Ericsson’s exhibits, filed mostly in English and French with some material in Chinese, had not been translated into Arabic as required by Article 14 of Law 38-15. They argued that the corporate link between TECNO and its parent, Transsion, had been established only via websites and an annual report rather than through official commercial-registry documents. And they seized on a clerical inconsistency in the bailiff’s report. The purchase document for one of the phones was, on closer inspection, a warranty slip rather than a proper invoice, and listed “TECHNO” rather than “TECNO” as brand. 

The defendant succeeded with its argument that Ericsson had failed to sufficiently establish a corporate link between TECNO and Transsion, and Transsion was removed as a defendant from the action against TECNO. Nevertheless, the court accepted the bailiff reports as valid despite the invoice quibble, and it did not allow the translation objection to stall the merits determination. That is a positive marker for the credibility of Moroccan proceedings as a venue: purely formal objections did not succeed in preventing the court from reaching a substantive decision on infringement and remedies. 

The defendant’s substantive arguments against the infringement allegation were not successful, and in some cases inconsistent with well-established principles of patent law. 

First, the defendants argued that Ericsson lacked standing to sue, because the patent register listed Ericsson only as “Depositor” (Déposant), while Article 16 of Law 17-97 supposedly reserves the right to sue for the named inventors or their successors in title. This inverts the ordinary logic of patent ownership, under which the enforcement rights are vested in the assignee, not the named inventor of the patent. The court’s response, that standing “derives from the official industrial property titles submitted”, needed no further elaboration. 

Second, the defendants disputed that Ericsson had proven infringement (see below). Even if the products were found to be infringing, the defendants argued that Ericsson had failed to prove that its patented inventions were novel. The defendants argued the patents were invalid under Article 26 of Law No. 17-97 on the Protection of Industrial Property, because 4G and 5G technology “has become commonplace throughout the world” and therefore lacks novelty. This confuses novelty as of the priority date, the only moment that matters for a novelty assessment, with the present-day success of the technology. Widespread adoption of a standardized technology years after a patent’s priority date says nothing about whether the claimed invention was new when filed. The court did not need to engage with these (very weak) arguments directed at validity: under Moroccan law, validity challenges cannot be raised as a defense within an infringement action. They require a separate nullity proceeding, and a granted, unchallenged patent enjoys a presumption of validity in the infringement proceeding.

A potentially real defense was raised, but never fully developed 

The defendant raised one more plausible defense argument: that Ericsson had not substantiated infringement of any specific patent claim. The defendants pointed out that Ericsson’s complaint devoted barely a couple of lines to connecting the patented invention to the accused products, relying instead on the general assertion that a “standard-compliant” phone necessarily infringes.  

The defense argument rested on two prongs, none of which proved successful: first, the defendants alleged that their phones used a proprietary technology, and that “4G” or “5G” labels on the packaging could not establish infringement of the specific claimed methods, since those designations are generic and unregistered and not reserved to products using a specific technology. Nevertheless, the bailiff report also indicated that the bailiff had verified that he had used the purchased TECNO phone to establish an internet connection using the 4G mobile communications network. Second, the defendants argued that the plaintiff had not established infringement by demonstrating, as required by Article 211 of Law No. 17-97 on the Protection of Industrial Property, the infringing methods used in the device. The defendants asserted that the plaintiff’s infringement theory – that a patent that is essential to the 4G or 5G standard is necessarily infringed by any product using these standards – is contrary to the law, as the word “standard” has no existence in the statutory texts defining an invention. 

Contrary to the defendants’ framing, it is possible in principle to substantiate infringement by proving essentiality to a standard.³ But essentiality itself has to be demonstrated, not merely asserted by citing a specification number. The court, for its part, did not independently engage with the essentiality showing either, resolving infringement largely on the bailiff’s observation that the phones displayed 4G/5G markings. The infringement analysis is accordingly light by international standards. This is as much a product of how the defense was argued as of any inherent weakness in the court’s reasoning. 

No FRAND defense, but Ericsson came prepared for one anyway 

Transsion has apparently not raised a FRAND defense against Ericsson’s request for injunctive relief, even though (as we have argued) a Huawei v. ZTE-style defense may be available under Moroccan competition law, given the textual proximity between Article 102 TFEU and Article 7 of Loi n° 104-12.⁴ Ericsson’s own submissions read as if it expected exactly that defense to be raised. Ericsson documented a multi-year pattern of stalling by Transsion: the first notification letter of 2017 was resealed and sent back to Ericsson, followed by silence of over a year, and more than three years of negotiation over an NDA. This is exactly the kind of narrative a SEP holder builds to show that the implementer did not negotiate in good faith, thus forfeiting its right to a FRAND defense. And Ericsson sought leave to introduce comparable licenses granted to leading mobile phone makers, evidence whose principal use in FRAND litigation is to establish that the offered royalty rate was FRAND. None of this was strictly necessary given that the implementer failed to oppose the plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief on FRAND grounds. But it strongly suggests Ericsson litigated this case defensively, prepared to fend off a competition law defense that never actually materialized. It is plausible, even if impossible to verify from the judgment itself, that the sheer fact of Ericsson being able to present licenses with four of the world’s largest handset makers had some persuasive effect on the court’s willingness to find in Ericsson’s favor. This is not proof of infringement, which comparable licenses cannot supply, but background context suggesting Transsion was the outlier for not having a license to Ericsson’s patents. 

 Remedies: modest damages, but a real injunction 

Having established infringement, the court awarded damages to Ericsson. The headline damages figure — 100,000 MAD, under €10,000 — is modest, and the court offered no damages methodology, royalty-base analysis, or reference to the comparable licenses Ericsson had placed before it. That is worth flagging for future litigants who will want more predictability. But the commercially decisive remedy here is not the damages award — it is the injunction. The court ordered the First Defendant to cease manufacturing, offering, selling, using or otherwise dealing in any product practicing all four patents-in-suit, on pain of an escalating daily penalty. For a handset seller operating at Transsion’s stated scale in Africa (a 48.71% market share, per its own annual report), an enforceable order threatening its Moroccan product line is a meaningful point of pressure regardless of the damages quantum — and it is precisely the kind of relief that global licensing negotiations are built around. The methodology gap on damages is a real, fixable maturation issue; it is not, on this record, evidence that the forum lacks teeth. 

The possibility of an enforceable injunction affecting market access is often a far more powerful driver of licensing discussions than a one-off damages award. While the court’s reasoning on damages leaves room for improvement, that is a question of judicial methodology, not of effectiveness. On the facts of this case, the judgment demonstrates that the Moroccan courts are willing to grant meaningful injunctive relief, and that is ultimately what gives the decision its commercial significance. 

Takeaways 

On balance, this judgment represents a significant step forward for patent enforcement, including SEP enforcement, in Morocco. The court demonstrated real institutional capacity: it moved quickly, it refused to let formalistic and, in places, doctrinally unsound defense arguments derail a merits determination, and it reached a considered, well-reasoned decision on the questions of standing and presumed validity. That combination of speed and substantive engagement is exactly what makes a jurisdiction credible to prospective litigants. 

That said, the immediate prospects for Morocco becoming a new Brazil-style venue that offers SEP holders leverage to be used in global SEP licensing disputes will depend less on this judgment than on patentees actually showing up with assertable titles. In our review of the ETSI IPR database, we identified only 87 Moroccan patent publication numbers declared as standard-essential. ⁵ Of those, 65, roughly three-quarters, were declared by Ericsson itself. Ericsson currently appears to be something of an outlier among SEP holders in actually having a usable Moroccan patent portfolio to bring to court; most other declared-SEP owners simply would not have the raw material to replicate this case today. 

That constraint, however, could change quite quickly. Under the existing validation agreement between Morocco and the European Patent Office, granted European patents can be validated in Morocco for a nominal fee, giving any EPO patentee a fast, low-cost route to a Moroccan title. If SEP holders more broadly start exercising that option, Morocco could see a real uptick in SEP filings. 

If that happens, the courts’ infringement analysis will need to mature quickly. This case shows that essentiality-based infringement theories are viable in Morocco in principle, and the defendants were wrong to suggest otherwise. Proving that a patent is essential to a standard (if that standard is indisputably used by a product) can be a legitimate and internationally recognized way of proving infringement. But essentiality has to actually be shown on the basis of the patent’s granted claims, not merely asserted by citing a specification number along with a short summary of the claimed invention. As the UK High Court put it, “Very many more patents are declared to be essential than in fact are essential.”⁶ Morocco’s courts have just shown they are capable of handling a SEP case competently and expeditiously; the next step, as more cases arrive, will be pushing the substantive rigor of the infringement analysis to match that institutional promise. 

Future cases may also test the availability of FRAND defenses against SEP owners’ claims for injunctive relief. Moroccan competition law prohibits the abuse of a dominant position, a principle that is even enshrined in Article 36 of the Moroccan constitution. As demonstrated by the significant fines and damages that Maroc Telecom was ordered to pay to Inwi, there are real sanctions for companies found to have abused a dominant position on the Moroccan market.⁷ Furthermore, the decisions in the Inwi v. Maroc Telecom case further demonstrate that the Moroccan competition authorities may turn to EU competition law enforcement practice for guidance on the application of Moroccan competition law (which has evident textual similarity to EU competition law). Thus, a Huawei v ZTE style FRAND defense may well be a promising route for future defendants in SEP infringement litigation in Morocco (possibly more promising than the procedural objections preconized by Transsion).