Published: 1/3/13
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission settled charges that Google’s Motorola Mobility Division violated the Federal Trade Commission Act by seeking injunctions and exclusion orders against willing licensees of its FRAND-encumbered SEPs. The settlement provides for the establishment of a dispute resolution mechanism to adjudicate FRAND rates and bars the respondents from seeking an injunction during the pendency of the FRAND proceedings, including any appeals. In an analysis of the settlement, the FTC explained that “courts have found that patent holders may injure competition by breaching FRAND commitments they made to induce SSOs to standardize their patented technologies.” The FTC stated that the respondents’ conduct constituted a breach of their FRAND commitments, which had “the potential to harm consumers by excluding products from the market as a result of an injunction or by leading to higher prices because manufacturers are forced, by the threat of an injunction, to pay higher royalty rates.”