In one of the largest sums of damages awarded in an intellectual property dispute by an Indian court, the Delhi High Court on Monday directed the German telecom company, the Rosenberger group and its affiliated entities to pay over Rs 152 crore to a Canadian company, Communication Components Antenna Inc., for patent infringement.The judgment, by Justice Prathiba M Singh, goes beyond merely penalising IP infringement. It lays down how courts should evaluate digital evidence when physical products are hidden and how courts may calculate damages in highly competitive markets, while cautioning about the misuse of Artificial Intelligence in patent litigation.Technology and disputeThe dispute centres around the technology inside the cellular towers that power mobile networks. The plaintiff, CCAI, holds an Indian patent for a specific type of telecom antenna.Traditionally, a cell tower’s 360-degree coverage area is divided into “sectors”, each serviced by antennas emitting “symmetrical beams”. As telecom operators tried to increase subscriber capacity by putting more beams into these sectors, the symmetrical beams would overlap. These overlapping areas, known as “handover zones”, cause signal interference and dropped calls. CCAI’s patented invention solved this by splitting these sectors into smaller sub-sectors using “asymmetrical beams”. This allowed networks to handle more users in the exact same coverage area without expanding the handover zones.Also in Explained | Ozempic vs Olymviq: Why Novo Nordisk sued India’s Dr Reddy’s over weight loss product trademarkIn 2016, the CCAI discovered that the defendants – Rosenberger and its Indian arm, Prose Technologies – were allegedly selling antennas with identical, asymmetrical beam patterns to Indian telecom giants, like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. After attempts to negotiate a licensing agreement failed, CCAI filed a lawsuit in the Delhi High Court in 2019 seeking a permanent injunction and damages.‘Dartboard Model’ and AI warningIn patent infringement cases, one of the standard defences is claiming that the plaintiff’s patent is invalid because the invention was “obvious” and already known in older technology, legally termed “prior art”.To prove this, Rosenberger submitted nine different, older patents, ranging from 3D lenses to adaptive networks, arguing that any engineer could have combined these older ideas to create CCAI’s antenna.Story continues below this adJustice Singh rejected this approach, invoking the legal doctrine against ‘mosaicing” – which, in patent law, refers to the impermissible practice of stitching together completely unrelated historical documents using hindsight bias to claim that an invention was obvious. The court noted that to combine older patents, there must be a clear, logical thread connecting them, which was absent here.The court coined a term for the defendants’ strategy: the “Dartboard Model”. Justice Singh observed that Rosenberger placed the patent at the centre of a dartboard and slung “darts” in the form of unrelated prior arts at it ‘with the fervent hope that one would hit the ‘Bulls-Eye’.”The court noted that this tactic could become a systemic issue because “[i]n the era of increased use of AI tools and Large Language Models (LLMs) it would be extremely easy for persons challenging patents… to cite several unrelated prior arts, raising the objection of lack of inventive step.” The court cautioned that judges must subject such defences to “deeper scrutiny” so that human innovation is not stifled.Hiding the ‘best evidence’Another major legal question before the court was how to prove infringement in the absence of the physical product, since telecom antennas are massive, customised pieces of equipment not sold in retail stores. During the trial, Rosenberger never produced their actual physical antennas for the court to examine. The court deprecated this, stating that “the defendants have led an evasive evidence and have been unable to establish invalidity as also failed to produce their antennas or even the beam patterns”, calling their conduct “far from bonafide”.Story continues below this adBecause the physical antennas were withheld, CCAI relied on software simulations, using a standard engineering software called MATLAB to simulate the mathematical formulas in their patent and overlaying those results onto the beam pattern graphs found in Rosenberger’s marketing brochures.Also Read | Supreme Court’s high bar for overturning enforcement of foreign arbitration awardsRosenberger argued that software simulations and marketing brochures were legally insufficient to prove infringement. But the court disagreed, Justice Singh ruling that Rosenberger had “withheld their best evidence” by choosing not to bring their antennas or their engineers to court. This is why the court accepted CCAI’s software simulations and held Rosenberger to the technical claims they had made in their own sales brochures.Math behind Rs 152 croreHaving established that Rosenberger infringed the patent, the court had to calculate the financial penalty. CCAI demanded damages based on “lost profits”, arguing that every antenna Rosenberger sold to Jio or Airtel was a sale stolen from them, amounting to millions of dollars.The court rejected this methodology, offering a realistic look at how commercial markets operate. The judgment noted that telecom companies often use a “reverse auction mechanism” to buy equipment. In these bids, buyers choose vendors based on multiple factors, including marketing, after-sales service and, most importantly, cheaper pricing – not just the patented technology. Therefore, the court held it was legally unsound to assume that CCAI would have won all those contracts.Story continues below this adInstead, the court applied the “reasonable royalties” standard, which calculates what the infringer would have had to pay assuming they had legally licensed the technology. Relying on a sealed-cover licensing agreement CCAI had previously signed with another company, the court determined that a 20 per cent royalty on the price of the antennas was a “fair and justified measure”.Applying this 20 per cent rate to Rosenberger’s admitted sales figures, the court arrived at the final damages figure of Rs 152,32,36,783, ordering Rosenberger to pay the amount within three months.