SEP Essentials

My two previous posts in this series examined the tidbits that can be gleaned from the UK and Chinese cases in the ZTE/Samsung dispute, Courts That "FRAND" Differently: Part 1, and the first set of lessons that can and should be learned from them with a focus on structural problems (lessons 1-4), Courts that “FRAND” Differently Part 2: Lessons To Be Learned. This post also focuses on lessons that can and should be learned from the cases with a focus on FRAND licenses and “com

I recently posted about how two different courts –the High Court of England and Wales (“UK Court”) and China’s Chongqing Intermediate People’s Court (“Chinese Court”) – reached vastly different conclusions on the value of a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (“FRAND”) portfolio cross-license for the same set of cellular SEP portfolios.[1] I originally wanted to title this series “Courts That Can’t Math.” I changed the title, however, to Courts That "FRAND" Differently b

I recently wrote about the 2026 Office of the United States Trade Representative Special 301 Report (“Report”) (see, 2026 USTR 301 Report). The Report claimed that Licensing Negotiation Groups (LNGs) are a “concerning development” that could harm competition. Not once, however, did the Report identify the much more concerning development of large patent pools that seek injunctions against implementers. So, let’s take another dive into competition law and the competition la

Recently, I have been focusing on why competition law authorities should pay more attention to standard setting, SEP licensing, SEP litigation, and SEP sales. Well, it turns out that the Brazilian competition authority has decided to do just that. Brazil is a jurisdiction that grants (near) automatic injunctions, including preliminary injunctions, for patent infringement, regardless of whether the patent is a SEP. Brazil also is the largest market in South America for cert

One of the excuses used by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice in the VoiceAgeEVS v. HMD case to justify an injunction was its finding that injunctions are necessary to encourage implementers to take a license. But SEP licensing is not a goal of standard development . Let me say that again – SEP licensing is not a goal of standard development. SEP licensing by those who participate in the development of a standard is tolerated only because it is believed to support one

Industry standards can be very beneficial to the public good. They can make products more efficient and less costly to manufacture, ensure that products sold by different companies work well together (“interoperate”), increase safety, improve quality and enable further technological innovation. In short, “good standards are good for business, good for consumers, and good for society.”[1] But, because of the nature of standard development and of standards themselves, the pro