Chinese phone maker OnePlus hit with sales ban in India (UPDATE: ban rescinded)

(Update on December 26: OnePlus can resume imports and sales in India. The Delhi High Court has set aside a previous order that barred the Chinese smartphone maker from selling handsets based on the Cyanogen operating system in the country, according to the Economic Times. Original post from December 17 is unchanged below.)

Chinese phone maker OnePlus has been barred by the Delhi High Court from selling, marketing, or importing phones in India. The dispute centers around OnePlus using Cyanogenmod’s version of Android, which is licensed exclusively in India by rival phone brand Micromax.

OnePlus received a shock in October when Micromax acquired the rights to be Cyanogen’s exclusive partner in India in order to launch Micromax’s new YU Cyanogen phone on December 18.

According to report from LiveMint, Micromax says that it has already “incurred major expenses for creation of a brand exclusively for providing to Indian customers mobile phones with Cyanogen operating systems,” and would suffer “irreparable harm and loss” if OnePlus was allowed to continue its “illegal acts.”

On OnePlus’s part, it claims it entered a collaboration and trademark license agreement with Cyanogen back in February that would allow it to use Cyanogen’s trademark and software anywhere in the world except for mainland China. However, it later traspired that Micromax possesses an exclusive license for South Asia. OnePlus told the court that Cyanogen only mentioned the Indian agreement was terminated a fortnight before the phones’ launch in India.

Cyanogen has already clarified that OnePlus One phones sold in India will not receive updates. In return, OnePlus says it will start work on a custom Android build for its users in India. The high court has allowed the Chinese company, which launched its OnePlus One phones in India through Amazon on December 2, to clear its stock of Cyanogen-based products.

Earlier this month, Xiaomi was banned from the Indian market in a dispute over patents held by Ericsson. The company is now allowed to restart sales in India after winning temporary reprieve on the ban.

See: OnePlus has sold 500,000 phones so far, half of them in China

(Source: LiveMint)