Download or read book SEPs SSOs and FRAND written by Kung-Chung Liu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a very useful reference guide on how de jure and de facto standards are being developed and how these standards compete against each other. The book also looks at how FRAND commitments are being determined across countries, how these disputes have played out, especially in Asia, and how they can be better dealt with in future globally. The book gives a broad overview of the business model of dominant SEP patentees and analyzes some standards for FRAND licensing of SEPs which are converging in major Asian jurisdictions. It highlights the need for ex ante regulation in the FRAND licensing of SEPs and suggests how we can reconcile conflicts which may arise from different legal standards. This book provides detailed and comprehensive analysis of recent SEP cases with an emphasis on Asia and will interest anyone who wishes to have more insight into the legal, policy, industrial and economic implications of such issues.

Download or read book Patent Challenges for Standard Setting in the Global Economy written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-10-07 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patent Challenges for Standard-Setting in the Global Economy: Lessons from Information and Communication Technology examines how leading national and multinational standard-setting organizations (SSOs) address patent disclosures, licensing terms, transfers of patent ownership, and other issues that arise in connection with developing technical standards for consumer and other microelectronic products, associated software and components, and communications networks including the Internet. Attempting to balance the interests of patent holders, other participants in standard-setting, standards implementers, and consumers, the report calls on SSOs to develop more explicit policies to avoid patent holdup and royalty-stacking, ensure that licensing commitments carry over to new owners of the patents incorporated in standards, and limit injunctions for infringement of patents with those licensing commitments. The report recommends government measures to increase the transparency of patent ownership and use of standards information to improve patent quality and to reduce conflicts of laws across countries.

Download or read book Standard Setting Organizations and FRAND Licensing written by Jay P. Kesan and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 17 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This chapter reviews the law and policy relating to Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs) and the FRAND commitment. To improve interoperability, we need technology standards, and to create them, we need industry members to work together in standard-setting organizations (SSOs). To ensure that the technology standards can be broadly adopted, the SSOs often need patent owners to promise to make standard-essential patents (SEPs) available to all manufacturers for a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) royalty.The legal effect of such FRAND commitments is not yet settled, leading to a considerable amount of litigation in the United States and around the world. This lack of clarity is especially problematic when the dispute is international because jurisdictions may view these commitments very differently.There are many issues relating to FRAND commitments, including: (1) what makes a patent 'essential' to a standard; (2) whether the FRAND obligation transfers to subsequent assignees of the patent; (3) whether FRAND commitments should apply to patents acquired after making the FRAND commitment (i.e., after-acquired patents); (4) whether nonmembers of the SSO should have the same standing as SSO members to enforce FRAND commitments; and (5) whether the FRAND commitment should impact remedies available in patent litigation, either from the perspective of the patent owner or the beneficiary of the FRAND commitment. As the law surrounding FRAND commitments develops, the legal community should be wary of abuses on both sides. While patent owners should not be permitted to abuse the added leverage that owning a SEP provides, the FRAND commitment must not be abused by standard adopters who take advantage of the fact that a SEP owner cannot simply deny a license.To be meaningful, a FRAND commitment should be enforceable against a SEP owner's successor-in-interest, and injunctions for SEP infringement should be issued under limited circumstances. Ultimately, policy concerns require the balancing of many different interests in order to ensure a healthy market for technology.

Download or read book Complications and Quandaries in the ICT Sector written by Ashish Bharadwaj and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-27 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. With technology standards becoming increasingly common, particularly in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, the complexities and contradictions at the interface of intellectual property law and competition law have emerged strongly. This book talks about how the regulatory agencies and courts in the United States, European Union and India are dealing with the rising allegations of anti-competitive behaviour by standard essential patent (SEP) holders. It also discusses the role of standards setting organizations / standards developing organizations (SSO/SDO) and the various players involved in implementing the standards that influence practices and internal dynamics in the ICT sector. This book includes discussions on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms and the complexities that arise when both licensors and licensees of SEPs differ on what they mean by “fair”, “reasonable” and “non-discriminatory” terms. It also addresses topics such as the appropriate royalty base, calculation of FRAND rates and concerns related to FRAND commitments and the role of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in collaborative standard setting process. This book provides a wide range of valuable information and is a useful tool for graduate students, academics and researchers.

Download or read book Multi dimensional Approaches Towards New Technology written by Ashish Bharadwaj and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-23 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access edited book captures the complexities and conflicts arising at the interface of intellectual property rights (IPR) and competition law. To do so, it discusses four specific themes: (a) policies governing functioning of standard setting organizations (SSOs), transparency and incentivising future innovation; (b) issue of royalties for standard essential patents (SEPs) and related disputes; (c) due process principles, procedural fairness and best practices in competition law; and (d) coherence of patent policies and consonance with competition law to support innovation in new technologies. Many countries have formulated policies and re-oriented their economies to foster technological innovation as it is seen as a major source of economic growth. At the same time, there have been tensions between patent laws and competition laws, despite the fact that both are intended to enhance consumer welfare. In this regard, licensing of SEPs has been debated extensively, although in most instances, innovators and implementers successfully negotiate licensing of SEPs. However, there have been instances where disagreements on royalty base and royalty rates, terms of licensing, bundling of patents in licenses, pooling of licenses have arisen, and this has resulted in a surge of litigation in various jurisdictions and also drawn the attention of competition/anti-trust regulators. Further, a lingering lack of consensus among scholars, industry experts and regulators regarding solutions and techniques that are apposite in these matters across jurisdictions has added to the confusion. This book looks at the processes adopted by the competition/anti-trust regulators to apply the principles of due process and procedural fairness in investigating abuse of dominance cases against innovators.

Download or read book Patent Remedies and Complex Products written by C. Bradford Biddle and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a collaboration among twenty legal scholars from North America, Europe and Asia, this book presents an international consensus on the use of patent remedies for complex products such as smartphones, computer networks, and the Internet of Things. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Download or read book The Meaning of Frand Part II written by J. Gregory Sidak and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under what conditions may the holder of standard-essential patents (SEPs) seek to enjoin an infringing implementer without breaching the SEP holder's contract with the standard-setting organization (SSO) to provide access to those SEPs on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms? I show that the SEP holder's contractual obligations still permit it to seek an injunction. A FRAND commitment requires the SEP holder to offer a license for the SEPs on FRAND terms (or otherwise to grant implementers access to the SEPs). Extending an offer containing a price within the FRAND range discharges the SEP holder's contractual obligation. Thereafter, the SEP holder may seek to enjoin an implementer that has rejected a FRAND offer. This analysis indicates the imprudence of categorically banning injunctions for the infringement of SEPs, as some scholars have advocated and as one of the world's most significant SSOs -- the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) -- actually did in 2015 in amendments to its bylaws. Such a ban would invite opportunism by implementers and is unnecessary. Courts already can prevent opportunism by SEP holders by conditioning an injunction on the implementer's actual or constructive rejection of a FRAND offer.

Download or read book Assertion of Standards Essential Patents by Non Practicing Entities written by Jorge L. Contreras and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extensive literature exists regarding the patent disclosure and licensing commitments made by participants in standard-setting organizations (SSOs), and the assertion of patents by non-practicing entities (NPEs). This study is the first to assess the degree to which NPEs have asserted standards-essential patents (SEPs), and the characteristics of these assertions. We present descriptive statistics regarding NPE and Producer assertions of SEPs pertaining to seven broadly-adopted standards in the telecommunications and networking sectors over a 16.5-year period. Twenty-six NPEs were identified as asserting SEPs pertaining to the standards studied. NPEs initiated 64% of all SEP cases and 77% of all unique patent-defendant assertion events involving these SEPs. NPEs initiated 82% of all defendant-assertion events relating to the five standards subject to FRAND licensing commitments, but only 25% of such events relating to the two standards subject to royalty-free (RF) licensing commitments. When NPEs asserted SEPs from FRAND-based SSOs, the large majority of these assertions (73%) were of unencumbered SEPs. Producers, however, generally asserted FRAND-encumbered SEPs. In the case of SEPs from RF SSOs, NPEs asserted only unencumbered SEPs, while Producers asserted both encumbered and unencumbered SEPs. And while NPE SEP assertions were resolved by settlement at approximately the same rate as Producer SEP assertions, Producer plaintiffs were almost five times as likely to prevail on the merits as NPE plaintiffs. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for current debates regarding FRAND licensing and SSO policy limitations, particularly proposals to impose SSO-based licensing encumbrances on SEPs held by NPEs. We also observe that, while NPEs are responsible for a large number of assertions of unencumbered SEPs, the greater threat of hold-up and rent extraction, at least under U.S. law, appears to arise from assertions of unencumbered SEPs by Producers.

Download or read book Standard Setting Organisations IPR Policies written by Manveen Singh and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a unique insight into the world of standard-setting organizations (SSOs)’ IPR policies and the role they play in balancing the interests of innovators and implementers, vis-à-vis the development of standards. Since the beginning of the 21st century, there have been quite a few questions asked of the SSOs as to the legality of their IPR policies and the enforceability of disclosure and licensing obligations enshrined therein. That, coupled with disagreements over the appropriate royalty rate and royalty base, has resulted in extensive litigation between innovators and implementers, especially across the Atlantic. The Book, in keeping the USA and EU as the two primary jurisdictions, offers a comprehensive analysis of the disclosure and licensing obligations under SSO IPR policies, with strong theoretical foundations justifying their imposition. More specifically, it offers a bird’s eye view of the various facets of disclosure and licensing, ranging from non-disclosure and transparency on one hand, to the determination of FRAND on the other. While much has been said about the benefits arising out of collaborative standard-setting, disputes involving SEP licensing have not been limited to the courts, and have attracted a significant amount of scrutiny by competition/antitrust agencies. The Book provides an elaborate account of the anti-competitive concerns surrounding standard-setting, and further documents the role of courts and competition agencies in ensuring good faith licensing negotiations between the SEP holders and implementers. Despite largely focusing on SEP licensing disputes in the USA and EU, the Book also offers a dedicated chapter on standard-setting in the Indian context. The readers are presented with an in-depth discussion on the contrasting approaches adopted by the courts and the Competition Commission of India (CCI), in addressing disputes involving SEPs. The said discussion is supplemented by a careful analysis of the SEP licensing guidelines to have emerged out of other implementer-oriented economies like China and Japan. By doing so, the Book offers readers the opportunity to study and compare the SEP licensing framework in developed, as well as developing economies. SSO IPR policies play an integral role in the development of standards, and with technologies such as the Internet of Things and 5G knocking on the doors, the Book makes for a valuable study on the nuances of standard-setting through the lens of SSOs, and will find takers among a wide reader base of students, researchers, academics, law practitioners, corporates, and policy makers.

Download or read book Standard Essential Patents and FRAND Terms written by V.K Ahuja and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standards are essential for consistency, interoperability and conformity of products/parts from various producers.The standard compliant devices may play an important role in the domain of telecommunication, entertainment, education, medical, business and other sectors. From consumers' perspectives, standards play an important role by ensuring to them --the quality and safety of products and services‖. Interoperability results into more utility and brings down the prices of the products. The standards are set by Standard Setting Organisations (SSOs). In cases, where the invention made as a part of an --essential standard‖ is patented, that patent becomes Standard Essential Patent (SEP).The holders of SEPs are required to give an undertaking to the SSOs that they will grant license to the users of their SEPs on --fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms‖ popularly known as FRAND terms. The SEP holders enjoy dominant position and sometimes misuse that position. They are expected to ensure fair access to SEPs by the users so that the benefit goes to the consumers in terms of standard compliant devices at competitive prices. The courts in various jurisdictions have given pronouncements on FRAND terms as well as on anticompetitive practices adopted by the SEP holders.

Download or read book The Interface Between Intellectual Property Law and Competition Law written by Soukayna Aouad and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standard-essential patents (SEPs) are subject to fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. Patent holders voluntary commit to license their SEPs under FRAND terms once they opt for the inclusion of their patented technology in a standard. In the intellectual property policies, standard-setting organisations (SSOs) require that all SEPs shall be subject to FRAND commitments in order to avoid distortion of competition. Hence a contract is concluded between the SSO and the patent holder, with potential standard users as third party beneficiaries. The latter have limited rights (within the scope of the FRAND undertaking). SEP holder and standard user shall proceed to negotiation in order to define the license terms. Royalties shall not be too excessive and shall be fair, as well as non-discriminatory. SEP holders expect to receive a fair compensation for the access of their invention. Conversely, manufacturers assume to be granted FRAND licensing terms. Legal precedents help us understanding what constitute FRAND terms and what are the legal requirements in terms of negotiation procedure. FRAND aimed at avoiding restriction of competition. Incentive for innovation and protection of consumers' welfare are two goals to reach.

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Technical Standardization Law written by Jorge L. Contreras and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technical standards are ubiquitous in the modern networked economy. They allow products made and sold by different vendors to interoperate with little to no consumer effort and enable new market entrants to innovate on top of established technology platforms. This groundbreaking volume, edited by Jorge L. Contreras, assesses and analyzes the legal aspects of technical standards and standardization. Bringing together more than thirty leading international scholars, advocates, and policymakers, it focuses on two of the most contentious and critical areas pertaining to standards today in key jurisdictions around the world: antitrust/competition law and patent law. (A subsequent volume will focus on international trade, copyright, and administrative law.) This comprehensive, detailed examination sheds new light on the standards that shape the global technology marketplace and will serve as an indispensable tool for scholars, practitioners, judges, and policymakers everywhere.

Download or read book FRAND s Forever written by Jay P. Kesan and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Internet, computing, and telecommunications industries are ripe for a collision between the worlds of intellectual property and standardization. Many technologies in these industries are covered by patents, and some of these patented technologies are essential to standards necessary for interoperability. Many standard-setting organizations (SSOs) adopt IP rules that require participants in the standard-setting process to disclose essential patents or promise to license essential patents on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms to implementers of the standard. However, many SSOs also state that the SSO will not get involved in licensing disputes. Thus, it is left to the patent owner and the implementer of the standard to work through their differences, which sometimes results in generalist judges resolving cutting edge technology issues with potentially far-reaching impacts on consumers. We examine the theoretical foundations of FRAND commitments and analyze recent case law to expose the limited ways that theories grounded in patent, antitrust, and contract can apply to problems concerning the FRAND commitment. We note that a contract-based theory offers a good approach in many situations, but there are significant limitations to contract theory as applied to FRAND commitments. In particular, contract theory fails to effectively address the problem of enforcing FRAND commitments after an essential patent has been transferred. In this Article, we propose a novel theory for applying property law to FRAND commitments. As recent work by Merrill and Smith on the property and contract interface demonstrates, there are a number of areas of law that cannot be characterized as purely “in rem” or “in personam,” and in our view, this includes patents in the context of standards. Our property approach thus emphasizes the FRAND commitment as creating something analogous to a servitude under real property law, but our approach also acknowledges the importance of contract law principles to address many other issues. To preserve the viability of FRAND commitments, we have two main recommendations: (1) courts should view FRAND commitments as having traits of both property and contract and apply our proposed theory that FRAND commitments create a servitude that runs with the patent; and (2) courts and adjudicative agencies should reject efforts to impose injunctions on the use of essential patents when the infringer must use the patent to comply with the standard. Injunctions against the use of SEPs could have more harmful effects on consumers and competition than injunctions against the use of non-SEPs, and by making a FRAND commitment, the patent owner is stating that damages would be adequate to compensate for a loss of exclusivity. We thus urge courts to view a FRAND commitment as converting a property rule into a liability rule. If these two recommendations are adopted, companies that manufacture products that conform to technical standards will stand on firmer legal ground, confident in the availability of a license to all patents that are essential to a standard. This increased legal certainty through carefully circumscribed property and contractual rights will, in turn, foster further investments and support the adoption of standardized technologies, assuring the continuance of a robust market for innovation.

Download or read book A FRAND Contract s Intended Third Party Beneficiary written by J. Gregory Sidak and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The FRAND contract gives an implementer the right to obtain an offer to license a portfolio of standard-essential patents (SEPs) on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms. By making a FRAND offer, the SEP holder gives the implementer the power to accept and execute that offer in a binding license agreement on FRAND terms. If the implementer rejects the SEP holder's FRAND offer, either explicitly or by operation of law, the implementer extinguishes its rights as an intended third-party beneficiary of the FRAND contract and thereafter has no rights under the FRAND contract. After the unlicensed implementer has extinguished its rights as a third-party beneficiary, the SEP holder may request and obtain an injunction against the implementer, charge the implementer more than a FRAND royalty, or refuse to license its SEPs to the implementer.The implementer also may not invoke the FRAND contract to demand extraneous license terms. The FRAND contract gives the implementer no more rights to SEPs than what the SEP holder intends to convey to a third-party beneficiary. In particular, there is no evidence that the SEP holder intended to give the implementer the right to demand à la carte licensing of individual SEPs. For a court to construe the FRAND contract otherwise -- so as to compel the SEP holder to license its SEPs individually on demand -- is to assume that the SEP holder and the SSO would not have cared about the absurdly high transactions costs of licensing that such a contractual provision would cause. The SEP holder, of course, never would have found it commercially reasonable to agree to make that duty part of its FRAND commitment to the SSO. For the same economic reason, the observed norm within a standardized industry such as mobile telecommunications -- the usage of trade, in the parlance of contract interpretation -- is that SEP holders license their SEPs in portfolios.

Download or read book Disentangling the FRAND Conundrum written by Oscar Borgogno and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Courts, antitrust authorities, and policy makers across the world have been over concerned by holdup risks involving the strategic use of standard essential patents (SEPs). In order to avoid or at least mitigate holdup problems, it has been adopted the view that a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) commitment implies a waiver of the right to seek injunctions against infringers. However, contrary to the mainstream belief, there is no empirical evidence of structural and systematic problems of holdup and royalty stacking affecting SEPs licensing. Therefore, there is no convincing reason for laying down an exceptional antitrust treatment for FRAND-encumbered patents.Problems afflicting SEP licensing stems from the lack of contractual or organizational solutions provided by standard setting organizations (SSOs) which exacerbates the risk of strategic behaviors. First and foremost, SSOs should require all SEP owners involved in a standardization process to disclose, ahead of the standard adoption, the most restrictive licensing terms. Secondly, since holdup and royalty stacking problems increase proportionally with the number of SEPs and many patents declared essential by SSOs lack this characteristic, essentiality checks carried out by independent third parties should be imposed to mitigate the risk of over-declaration.

Download or read book Patents and Standards written by Michael Drapkin (Lawyer) and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Part I [of this book] looks at the history, organizations, and policy considerations involved in setting standards. Part II offers best practices for patent prosecution and portfolio development for standards-related technology, including interfacing with engineers, portfolio development, preparation of SEPs, claiming strategies, and prosecution in the U.S. and other countries. Part III examines licensing and litigation issues for patents and standards, including FRAND licensing, antitrust issues, and litigation forum selection and remedies. Contributing authors provide their perspectives on the key issues in this complicated and contentious area, and offer practical guidance, charts, tables, timelines, practice tips, and more."--

Download or read book Research Handbook on Intellectual Property Rights and Inclusivity written by Cristiana Sappa and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2024-06-05 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This insightful Research Handbook discusses how exclusive intellectual property rights can affect inclusivity within individual, community and business contexts. It employs urban and rural frameworks to provide a multidimensional view of contemporary inclusivity and its relationship with intellectual property.