SEP Essentials

Historically, when licensing negotiations fail, large SEP holders file patent infringement lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions against a single implementer. Sometimes implementers file breach of contract (for breach of the FRAND commitment) or declaratory judgement actions against SEP holders when negotiations break down. Here is the story of three such disputes. Each of the jurisdictions listed below is an outlier in its own way. Can you name each of the jurisdictions?

Title VI of the Proposal establishes the Center as an avenue for making (potentially global) FRAND determinations. As the Proposal recognizes, we currently have at least two different jurisdictions (the U.K. and China), each of which claim to have the authority to set global FRAND rates and determine world-wide FRAND licenses. You have to ask yourself, do we need yet another forum that purports to have the authority to set global FRAND rates. The answer is yes, maybe, in so

We are back with Andrew Myles. Please see my Interview with Andrew Myles – Part 1 for information about Andrew and his background. My first set of questions relates to how things have changed over the time you have been involved in standard development. Let’s start with participation in the meetings. What have you seen change over time related to who participates in standards development? One thing that has really changed in the 802.11 development effort is that some compa

What is the purpose of a standard? “The focus of standards development should be the benefit of humanity.” Andrew Myles (quoting from the IEEE’s mission statement ). Andrew Myles has been involved in standards development for decades, starting in the late 1980s. He has been a contributor to ANSI’s FDDI development (ANSI X3T9.5), to the IETF’s Mobile-IP development group, a very long time contributor to IEEE’s 802.11 working group, to 3GPP’s RAN1 Technical Specification Grou

FRAND means Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory. While the Proposal improves transparency regarding SEPs, it has some significant flaws when it comes to ensuring a fair and non-discriminatory system. This post focuses on the provisions regarding setting an aggregate royalty with a brief discussion of non-discrimination which is barely mentioned in the Proposal. There are four provisions in the Proposal that address the setting of an aggregate royalty (Articles 15 – 18)

As I previously discussed (see EU Proposal - Part One ), the goals of the European Commission’s “Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on standard essential patents and amending Regulation (EU) 2017/1001” (“Proposal”) are laudable. The details of the proposal are important however, and this post takes a deeper dive into those details. If those details are done well, the final regulations could do much to accomplish its goals of bringing tra