Xiaomi blames rogue reseller for reigniting legal troubles in India

An Indian court is investigating Xiaomi after telecommunications giant Ericsson accused the Chinese smartphone maker of violating a court order to halt imports and sales of phones using Ericsson’s patented technology, according to the Financial Times.

Xiaomi was first slapped with an injunction from an Indian high court in December, forcing it to halt import and sales of all its phones for allegedly infringing on patents owned by Ericsson. Xiaomi then received a reprieve from December 23 to January 8, after which the injunction went back into place. That ban was later altered to only include the specific models in question, which contained chipsets made by Taiwanese chip-maker MediaTek. That injunction remains in place today.

Ericsson says Xiaomi continued to sell the phone models placed under injunction even after it was expressly prohibited from doing so.

Xiaomi denies the allegations, however, laying the blame on an unauthorized third-party reseller, XiaomiShop.com. It says it complied with the court’s orders and stopped sales of the phones in question on Flipkart, the only vendor authorized by Xiaomi in the country other than telcos.

Currently, the Xiaomi models available for sale on Flipkart are the Mi 4 and Redmi Note 4G. Both those phones use Qualcomm chipsets. The Redmi 1S, which contains a MediaTek chipset, is not listed.

In countries where Xiaomi phones are not yet available, XiaomiShop and a handful of other unauthorized importers and resellers plug the demand gap, though items are sold at a much higher markup to account for shipping and procurement expenses. XiaomiShop is unaffiliated with Xiaomi, and Xiaomi implied it had no control over such third-party resellers.

Xiaomi told FT it intends to take legal action against XiaomiShop, saying it has requested for the unauthorized grey market importer to stop selling its products in the past.

The investigator looking into Ericsson’s claims will produce a report on March 18 at a court hearing.

See: It’s just Yu and Mi, baby: Xiaomi faces stronger, more confident homegrown rival in India

(Source: Financial Times)