Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus was stopped from shipping or selling its smartphones in India, following an interim injunction by the Delhi High Court. This was after the domestic handset maker Micromax complained that its exclusive rights had been infringed by OnePlus launching OnePlus One in the country, running a custom version of Cyanogenmod. Micromax had an exclusive license for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Myanmar regions from the same company, while OnePlus has a global non-exclusive license for Cyanogen. Details in ruling by the Delhi High Court indicate that Cyanogen changed its stand repeatedly. A timeline of what transpired: January 2014: OnePlus signs non-exclusive global licensing deal with Cyanogen OnePlus announces its partnership with Cyanogen, as part of which Cyanogen developed a custom version of its Android deployment Cyanogenmod called Cyanogenmod 11S for the first OnePlus phone called OnePlus One, which was also the first commercial Cyanogen product. The order says OnePlus was granted a two-year limited non-exclusive license to use Cyanogen’s trademarks and software across the entire world, except for Mainland China, valid until January 31, 2016. The agreement was limited to online distribution. Mid-2014: Micromax signs 3-year exclusive licensing deal with Cyanogen Micromax signs a three year agreement to integrate and distribute Cyanogen’s core operating systems, as well as its ambient services (like remote wiping, privacy guard, and phone locating among others), and applications (Apollo music player, Clock widget and Sound recorder among others). This agreement became effective from September 26, 2014, and gave Micromax exclusive licenses for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Myanmar regions. While the ambient services…
