SEP Essentials

The United States “Acting Solicitor” and “Acting General Counsel” for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, along with a bunch of attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, recently filed a Statement of Interest (“ SOI ”) in the Radian Memory Systems LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Samsung Electronics America, Inc. case (“ Radian lawsuit ”). [1]   The Radian lawsuit involves allegations related to the NVM Express standard for flash solid-sta

A few days ago, Intel Corporation (“ Intel ”) won a jury verdict against a patent licensing entity called VLSI Technology LLC (“ VLSI ”).  The jury found that VLSI was controlled by a patent investment company called Fortress Investment Group (“ Fortress ”).  The jury also found that Fortress controlled another patent licensing entity known as Finjan Inc. (" Finjan ").  The net net of this is that Finjan and VLSI have now been found to be “Affiliates” of each other within the

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the rubric of willing/unwilling has passed its use by date (see Time to Throw Away the Willing/Unwilling Paradigm ).  Today I wanted to talk about what it is like to negotiate a license under that rubric.   This post is based on my decades of experience being involved in SEP license negotiations and disputes. It contains actual (anonymized) quotes from correspondence between various SEP licensors and implementers over those years. The Deman

Way back in the early days of this blog, I wrote an article about the EU’s complaint in the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) against China ( First Pop Quiz Revisited - The EU Complaint Against China ).  The EU complaint alleged that China violated the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights “TRIPS” agreement primarily through Chinese courts’ use of anti-suit injunctions.  I wanted to give an update on that case:  it appears that the EU has lost. Although a publi

A lot of my practice these days involves technology development deal work.  This includes intellectual property license agreements where technology and know-how is transferred, and agreements to collaborate on developing new technologies.  This type of work is great: I love helping companies grow their business and develop innovative and interesting new technology.  Negotiations for these types of deals can sometimes take a long time – several months or even as long as a year

The bipartisan “Promoting United States Leadership in Standards Act of 2025” was recently introduced in the United States Senate by Senators Blackburn and Warner. [1]   The intent of the Act is to “promote United States leadership in technical standards” and “ to encourage and enable United States participation in developing standards and specifications for artificial intelligence and other critical and emerging technologies.”  This is obviously a worthy goal.  The current sy