Context:

• The circumstances surrounding the recent last-minute cancelation of a ZTE v. Samsung standard-essential patent (SEP) trial in Munich (October 23, 2025 ip fray article) remain unclear. There may have been a purely procedural agreement relating to a single case.

• Samsung has withdrawn its complaint with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) (October 16, 2025 ip fray article) subsequently to an ex parte preliminary injunction (October 15, 2025 ip fray article).

• ZTE scored a major win last week when it became the first SEP holder to prevali over an interim-license request in the England & Wales Court of Appeal (EWCA) (October 31, 2025 ip fray article).

• Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California indicated in the summer that Samsung’s U.S. FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) and antitrust complaint against ZTE may very well be dismissed (July 9, 2025 ip fray article).

What’s new: On Thursday afternoon (Pacific Time), Judge Martínez-Olguín held (via Zoom) the motion-to-dismiss hearing and will issue a written order soon. Samsung’s counsel focused largely on allegations involving then-ZTE employee Mang Zhu (for her background, see August 11, 2025 ip fray interview). ZTE’s counsel stressed that the alleged deficiencies of Samsung’s complaint involve both an insufficient connection with California and a general failure to state a viable antitrust claim under the case law of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where since FTC v. Qualcomm (2020) no comparable case has gone forward. One precedent from the Northern District of California that the judge wanted Samsung to differentiate its complaint from is the July 8, 2022 dismissal of Lenovo v. IPCom (Justia link).

Direct impact:

• As the course of the hearing (discussed in more detail further below) showed, ZTE’s motion to dismiss (May 28, 2025 ip fray article) could succeed. Samsung faced the tougher questions (one of which also involved a skeptical observation regarding a lack of citations to district court decisions supporting Samsung’s position on connections with the forum). Samsung received more questions and was given more time. Its counsel repeatedly presented arguments for why they should at least be allowed to amend their complaint, especially after the judge asked one question about whether an amendment would cure an alleged deficiency regarding the lack of a U.S. connection of the licensing negotiations.

• All of those signs suggest that dismissal is more likely than the case going forward. Based on the briefing and how the hearing went, our probability estimates are 30%+ for a dismissal without prejudice (Samsung would be allowed to amend the complaint, in which case ZTE has already announced a renewed motion to dismiss), 40% for a dismissal with prejudice (no right to amend), and less than 30% for the case going forward on the basis of the current complaint.

• There were no signs of the judge having become any more convinced by Samsung of this case being deserving of the time and attention of one of the busiest courts in the United States.

• At the end, Samsung’s counsel pointed to a paragraph of the complaint that falls far short of the level of specificity required for a Broadcom v. Qualcomm claim.

Wider ramifications: It remains highly questionable whether Samsung’s scattershot FRAND/antitrust litigation strategy was the right choice. Its overlapping cases have no traction in any court at this stage, except that it is too early for the Frankfurt Regional Court to have given any indication (there will be a trial on February 4, 2026, but Germany is a difficult jurisdiction for antitrust claims against SEP holders).