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51 booths during the 2008 CeBIT annual trade show were raided by German police due to breaches of patents with the MP3 file format. Various models of cellphones, mobile music players, satellite navigation devices and even screens were confiscated following the raid.

The patent complaints that started it all came from an Italian firm called Sisvel, who filed the said complaints on behalf of big companies including Philips, one of the largest electronic companies in the world, who through an agreement is granted the right to demand a licensing fee for consumer electronics devices sold in Europe.

The funny thing is, some of the companies involved in the patent crackdown were repeat offenders, and that Sisvel has been keeping an eye out for companies like these for a couple of years now. Chinese company Meizu, with its so-called “legitimate iPhone knockoff”, the Meizu Mini One, was not surprisingly included in the list of raided companies for its new portable MP3 player.

The 180 person team, composed mainly of police and custom officers, were led by Senior Detective Oliver Stock in searching the booths of companies from China, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. Hopefully, this serves as a lesson to those who plan on joining CeBIT in 2009.

Read [The Register]