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) companies for years. This happened not too long ago to Ford, an iconic American company. It has happened to other American companies and, even as I write this, SEP holders continue to sue American companies in Germany in an effort to extract unfair tariffs from them.
Because of these inappropriate foreign injunctions, U.S. companies have been forced to pay exorbitant amounts of money in a clearly unfair and discriminatory way to foreign SEP holders. For example, there is a non-practicing entity called Avanci, founded and run by Kasim Alfalahi. Mr. Alfalahi got his start with a Swedish company: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson. Avanci does not make or sell any products and does not even itself develop any standards. It merely licenses patents on behalf of other companies, many of which are foreign.
These include the same Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson from which Mr. Alfalahi got his start as well as Chinese companies such as Huawei (whose products are banned from U.S. markets but whose patents are being used against U.S. companies), OPPO and ZTE, as well as the Dutch company Koninklijke KPN N.V. and the Finnish company Nokia. Avanci demands $32 for each car that wants to use 5G technology. That is a lot of money compared to the cost of the semiconductor chip that actually makes 5G technology work, particularly when Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, OPPO, ZTE, Koninklijke KPN, and Nokia don’t actually make anything that goes into the car to help make it function. So why would Congressional representatives want to change the U.S. legal system in a way that helps and protects these foreign companies at the expensive of U.S. businesses?
Rather than making America more like Germany, the U.S. should aim to make Germany more like America. The U.S. government needs to work with its German and European counterparts to ensure that the courts in Germany and the European Union do not issue injunctions willy-nilly against American (or other) companies. Injunctions should not issue when it would be unfair or unreasonable - the equities should always be weighed and the public good considered. Automatic injunctions should be eliminated. That is one way to stop the unfair tariffs and trade practices that have been turned against American companies.
We need to use our legal system to protect U.S. businesses from what amounts to unfair foreign tariffs. We need to just say no to the RESTORE Act.