Standard Setting Organizations and FRAND Licensing PDF Download

Author: Jay P. Kesan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 17

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Book Description
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.

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309293154
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
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.

Author: Ashish Bharadwaj
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811060118
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
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.

Author: C. Bradford Biddle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108426751
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
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.

Author: Jurgita Randakeviciúte
Publisher: Nomos Verlag
ISBN: 3845264276
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 67

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Book Description
Standardisierung ist ein wesentliches Instrument zur Förderung von Innovation und Wettbewerb, was wiederum sowohl Verbrauchern als auch Unternehmen zu Gute kommt. Doch aufgrund der Tatsache, dass die Normen in der Regel durch Standardessentielle Patente (SEP) geschützt sind, kann die Standardisierung den Zugriff auf die Technologie behindern und denjenigen den Eintritt in den Markt erschweren, die nicht Patentinhaber sind. Normungsorganisationen (SSPs) haben die Aufgabe das Gleichgewicht zwischen den Patentinhabern und den Nutzern herzustellen. Die Patentinhaber sollen von den Nutzern eines Standards Gebühren erhalten, die die Akzeptanz des Standards nicht unnötig gefährden. Recht häufig kommt es zu kostspieligen und zeitraubenden Rechtsstreitigkeiten, weil die Parteien nicht in der Lage sind, angemessene und nicht diskriminierende Lizenzbedingungen (FRAND) zu vereinbaren. Eine solche Situation behindert zwangsläufig die Umsetzung der standardisierten Technologie und führt zu der Frage, welche Funktion die SSOs während des Standardisierungsprozesses und bei der Festlegung des Standards haben.

Author: Ashish Bharadwaj
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 981131232X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
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.

Author: Kung-Chung Liu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367429379
Category : Foreign licensing agreements
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Introduction : As a Matter of Standard for Asia and Beyond? / Kung-Chung Liu -- De facto Standards / Jiyu Zhang -- De Jure Standard Setting in the Telecom Industry : Its Evolution and the Developing Country Case for Reform / Prashant Reddy Thikkavarapu -- Standard Setting Organizations, Standard-Essential Patents and FRAND Terms : An Economic Observation / Felix Conde, Lanhua Li and Can Huang -- US Perspectives / William Hubbard -- Asian Perspectives / Jyh-An Lee and Sang Jo Jong -- UK Perspectives / Peter Damerell and Tess Waldron -- Unprepared, Unable and Unwilling to Deal with FRAND Licensing of SEPs in Taiwan / Kung-Chung Liu -- Japan / Masabumi Suzuki -- Korea / Jinyul Ju -- IPR Protection and Antitrust Regulation of SEPs in China / Liyang Hou and Mengchi Tian -- Standard Essential Patents and FRAND Licensing : A View from India / -- Biswajit Dhar and Reji K. Joseph -- The Paradox of Relief: Reconciling Remedies in Patent Law and Competition Law for FRAND Cases in India / Feroz Ali -- FRAND as a Legal Concept at the Intersection between Competition Law and Intellectual Property Law : The Road Ahead for Singapore? / Burton Ong -- European Experiences: EU and Germany / Matthias Leistner -- Stakeholders' Views on Policy Concerns and Regulatory Framework for Self-regulation by SSOs / Fair Standards Alliance and Shengtao Hu -- Propositions for Regulated Self-regulation of SSOs / Kung-Chung Liu and Haoran Zhang.

Author: Jay P. Kesan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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.

Author: Garry Gabison
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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Book Description
Worldwide licenses linked to the standard setting process are being challenged on antitrust and jurisdictional grounds. While, so far, most courts have batted away these challenges, some courts have not recognized their validity. If worldwide licenses were to not be enforce globally, then the patent exhaustion doctrine could further eat into the patent holders' returns. Raising cost of enforcement linked to local licenses and lower returns linked to patent exhaustion would disincentivize standard setting participants. These worldwide licenses are essential to the standard system and must be protected as such: the standard setting organizations, Antitrust authorities, and courts have part to play to ensure the standards survive these attacks.

Author: the late Theodore Eisenberg
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 0857932586
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
Contemporary law and economics has greatly expanded its scope of inquiry as well as its sphere of influence. By focussing specifically on a comparative approach, this Handbook offers new insights for developing current law and economics research. It also provides stimuli for further research, exploring the idea that the comparative method offers a valuable way to enrich law and economics scholarship. With contributions from leading scholars from around the world, the Handbook sets the context by examining the past, present and future of comparative law and economics before addressing this approach to specific issues within the fields of intellectual property, competition, contracts, torts, judicial behaviour, tax, property law, energy markets, regulation and environmental agreements. This topical Handbook will be of great interest and value to scholars and postgraduate students of law and economics, looking for new directions in their research. It will also be a useful reference to policymakers and those working at an institutional level.