The Delhi High Court has banned OnePlus in India. OnePlus is not allowed to import, sell or advertise its flagship smartphone, OnePlus One in the Indian market. The current sale will last till it runs out of existing stocks after it is out of stock; it is not allowed to import any further units of OnePlus One in India.
The order came in a suit filed by Micromax seeking to restrain OnePlus from infringing the exclusive rights it has acquired by an “ambient services and application distributions agreement” with US-based software developing company Cyanogen. Cyanogen specializes in the modification of the Android operating system and through this agreement; Micromax was given an exclusive licence to integrate and distribute Cyanogen’s technology as a part of its devices in India.
OnePlus claimed it had entered a collaboration agreement and trademark licence agreement with Cyanogen in February to use its trademark and software in the entire world except mainland China. It also told the court that Cyanogen only informed it about the termination of their agreement a fortnight before its launch in India.
While Micromax has an exclusive licence for South Asia, OnePlus has a non-exclusive licence for the entire world except China. Cyanogen has clarified that its agreement with Micromax supersedes all prior agreements. The court also noted that while OnePlus may sue Cyanogen for breach of contract, the same will be governed by the laws of the state of California as per the agreement between them, and OnePlus will not have a remedy in India.
Last week, Xiaomi was slapped with a ban after a patent tussle with Ericsson. The Delhi High Court has permitted Xiaomi to sell and import Qualcomm chipset based handsets till January 08. The court is scheduled to hear the case on February 5, so it is likely that Xiaomi phones will again be banned in the country from January 9 unless the court passes another similar order.Before the ban, the company was selling only two smartphones in the country: Redmi 1S and Redmi Note. Of these, the former runs on a Qualcomm chipset, while the latter is powered by a MediaTek processor.
