Published: September 19, 2017
Publisher: IAM
“US district court judge James Robart has taken aim at the decision handed down by Justice Colin Birss in the high profile London High Court SEP/FRAND case of Unwired Planet v Huawei, decided earlier this year. Speaking at the annual IPO meeting in San Franciscoyesterday, Robart – who handed down the famous Microsoft v Motorola decision in 2013and sits in the Western District of Washington – said that Birss was wrong to offer specific royalty rates for the technology in question, rather than offering a range, and stated that he did not expect the judgment to be particularly influential in US courthouses.
Furthermore, Robart referred to Unwired Planet v Huawei as a “perfect storm” that featured an English judge, making a ruling on the eve of Brexit, in a high-profile case in Europe which was grounded in part in French law. ETSI, one of the leading standard setting organisations in the mobile space, is chartered under French law.”