An Indian court banned Chinese tech giant Xiaomi on Thursday from selling phones in the country. The High Court of Delhi also ordered the Indian customs to stop the entry of Xiaomi mobile units, tablets, and other electronic devices that infringe on the patents of Swedish phone giant Ericsson.

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It is Xiaomi's first court loss over eight patents. The court order includes Flipkart, the e-commerce partner of Xiaomi in India.

Gaurav Sharma, spokesman of Ericsson, told Bloomberg, "It's unfair for Xiaomi to benefit for our substantial R&R investment without paying a reasonable licensing fee for our technology."

Ericsson's charge appears to have basis because Xiaomi only has 12 patents, Global Times wrote. In contrast, the other Chinese phone giant, Huawei Technologies, is the holder of more than 22,000 patents and spent about US$5 billion in R&D.

The court order is effective until February 5, 2015, when it resumes hearing on the lawsuit. To help determine if Xiaomi indeed breached Ericsson's patents, the court ordered Flipkart and Xiaomi to provide it details of its gadgets sold in India that use the mobile technologies 3G, EDGE and AMR and the income that the two companies had earned.

The landmark decision is being awaited by other Chinese tech companies such as OPPO and Coolpad that view Xiaomi as their business model insofar as penetrating another Asian giant market is concerned, said Daniel Gleeson, senior analyst of London-based HIS Technology.

It is the second legal victory for Ericsson after the same Indian court ordered an Indian firm, Micromax, to pay the Swedish tech giant 1 percent of the price tag of its products as royalty. But the order is only until December 31, 2015 when the court ends the trial between Micromax and Ericsson.

Ericsson said that it had previously proposed to Ericsson to obtain from it license to use its patents, but the Chinese phonemaker ignored Ericsson and started to sell its devices in India in July.

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