SEP Essentials

The current U.S. administration has recently turned some of its attention to patents and patent policy.  The first such policy changes were not specific to standard essential patents[1]. But, on December 19, 2025, the White House released a “ Fact Sheet ” in which it announced its intention to focus on 6G technologies and on standards themselves. The White House’s announcement evidences the administration’s view that standard setting is a competitive endeavor – one with both

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

In our increasingly connected world, telecommunications and network interoperability is crucial to the United States economy.  Interoperability is provided by functional, well-designed standards.  If the U.S. is to maintain its leadership in the networking, telecommunications and emerging IoT markets, the U.S. government must act to protect the critical standards, such as Wi-Fi and cellular, used by Americans and American companies. The first step in this process is recognizi

One of the regulatory agencies which has run amuck over the last several years is the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).  The ITC was formed to protect U.S. domestic industries from unfair foreign competition.  But, at least in patent cases, it has strayed very far from that original mission.  Too often these days, the ITC lets foreign companies use the ITC against American companies in an end run around American courts.  American courts do not grant injunctions when

I keep musing on why a small set of American Senators, lead by Senator Chris Coons (Democrat from Delaware), is trying to make our country more like Germany.  I speak of course about the so-called RESTORE Act (see also my post The "RESTORE" Act which looks at the issues with the Act from a somewhat different perspective).  Foreign companies have been using the German legal system to extract unfair and unjust payments for FRAND committed SEPs from American (and other) compani

The United States has an odd pattern of taking a giant step (or two) backwards just as the rest of the world is, finally, moving forward.  The so-called “RESTORE” Act is in that same unfortunate American tradition of trashing the present in order to step backwards to some mythical vision of a halcyon past, just as everyone else finally starts to see the wisdom of moving forward.  So, just as Germany is, finally, moving away from automatic injunctions in patent cases and towar

There is so much going on in the world of SEPs and SEP policy right now that it is hard to keep up.  So, in a departure from my normal deeper dive posts, today’s post is a summary of a few recent SEP related government actions. Implementation Roadmap for the U.S. government’s “National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technology ”   Just in time for this election cycle, the Biden-Harris administration has released the Implementation Roadmap [1]  for the U.S. Gover

Kathi Vidal, Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, spoke today at the Berkeley-Stanford Advanced Patent Law Institute held at Stanford Law School along with Konstantinos Georgaras, CEO of the Canadian IP Office.  It was an interesting chat all around with a good discussion of each office’s diversity efforts, encouragement of underrepresented communities not only to file applications but to continue with them after a preliminary rejection and a lot on AI and the ch

On September 11, 2023, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”), International Trade Administration (“ITA”) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) jointly published a request for comments in the Federal Register seeking input from stakeholders on issues related to standards and intellectual property, especially as they impact small and medium enterprises in critical and emerging technologies. After an extension of time, public comments were due on No

This is my second post in response to the Department of Commerce of the United States government in conjunction with the U.S. National Institute of Standard and Technology (“NIST”) request for stakeholders and the public to provide input into Implementation of the United States Government National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technology. [1] This post focuses on when the government should intervene to foster standards development and what other support the g

The Department of Commerce of the United States government in conjunction with the U.S. National Institute of Standard and Technology (“NIST”) has asked stakeholders and the public to provide input into Implementation of the United States Government National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technology. They have provided a long list of complex questions and a very short time frame for comments. You can find the notice here: https://www.federalregister.gov/docume

Here are the answers to the quiz. The first set of cases was the dispute between Microsoft and Motorola, the second the IPCom litigation with Lenovo and the third the Conversant/Huawei dispute. The jurisdictions and why they are outliers are as follows. Jurisdiction 1 – the United States . Patent damages in the United States, including for SEPs, usually are much higher than anywhere else in the world. The US is also a very large market for consumer based standardized prod