SEP Essentials

At the WIPO Seminar on SEPs and Dispute Resolution (“Seminar”)[1], Justice Mellor said that the current system for making FRAND determinations is “madness." Filing lawsuits in multiple countries is not a good, or reasonable, way to assess a global FRAND rate or achieve a global FRAND license. All of the judges who spoke at the Seminar seemed to agree with Justice Mellor that the current system is failing. That, however, is where the agreement ended. As usual, Judge Schoen

It goes (nearly) without saying that, as of right now, the top courts for global FRAND disputes take vastly different approaches to FRAND determinations. This was on display at WIPO’s Seminar on SEPs and Dispute Resolution (“Seminar”), which took place last week.[1] The subtitle of the Seminar was, ironically, “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together?” That question mark was well placed given the last panel of the Seminar, “The Global Scoreboard: Assessing FRAND.” Four judges

In its “FRAND” Guidelines (“guidelines”), the Schoen Court made a lot of mistakes in its baseline assumptions, its legal analysis and its conclusions. It even made a number of mistakes in its citations. One of those mistakes occurs in paragraph 6 of the guidelines where the Schoen Court complains that the European Commission’s amicus curiae briefs in the proceedings that led to the Federal Court of Justice’s (“BGH”) “FRAND Objection III” decision (BGH KZR 10/25, GRUR 2026, 3

I have posted several times about Huawei’s scandalous behavior and growing domination of several standard setting/development organizations. This behavior includes “stuffing the ballot box in group voting” in the 802.11 working group, which came to light when a Huawei patent portfolio manager accidentally sent an email intended for another Huawei employee (who is Vice-Chair of the 802.11 working group) to the entire 802.11 email reflector.[1] I have also written extensively

Earlier this year, Judge Schoen (in)famously stated publicly that the 7th Civil Chamber of the Munich Court was unable to make FRAND determinations. He said: “we think it is not possible to determine a FRAND rate” (see We are Incapable of Making FRAND Determinations Say More UPC and German Judges). Despite admitting to being unable to make a FRAND determination in any particular case, the Schoen Court recently released SEP guidelines (“guidelines”) that make far reaching de

How did the myth that standard development is more important than implementation come to be such a dominant force in certain legal circles? Case in point: Judge Schöen and his cohorts (Judges Schweyer and Tözsér) of the 7th Civil Chamber of the Munich Regional Court (“Schoen Court”) recently released so-called FRAND Guidelines (“guidelines”) for cases in their court.[1] There are so many things wrong with the guidelines and the assumptions underpinning them that I am awardi