Published: June 1, 2018

Publisher: Law 360

Tech groups representing the tech, auto and retail industries Thursday released a white paper pushing back at a suggestion by a top U.S. antitrust official that enforcers should shift their focus away from potential abuses by holders of patents crucial to standard industries in favor of greater scrutiny on licensees.

Statements last November by Makan Delrahim, U.S. assistant attorney general for antitrust, cast doubt on the notion that users of standardized technologies are […]

Published: May, 2018

Publisher: Who’s Who Legal (WWL)

In the 2G era of wireless telecommunications (1990s and early 2000s) we saw huge collaborative advances in technology, with each contributor building on the work of others. But there was comparatively little patent litigation. Each technology developer wanted its competitors to pay when they used its technology. But each technology developer also needed to use its competitors’ technology to build its own devices. So both sides had an incentive to reach […]

Published: May 31, 2018

Publisher: IAM

A group of advocacy groups with close ties to the high-tech, automotive and retail industries have released a new paper calling into question several of the policy positions staked out by US antitrust chief Makan Delrahim regarding the application of antitrust law to the licensing of standard essential patents (SEPs).

Read more.

Published: May 30, 2018

Publisher: Bloomberg Law

Six industry associations want the Justice Department’s antitrust chief to reconsider his view that antitrust law shouldn’t apply to holders of patents that are essential to industry technology standards.

“Antitrust law has an important role to play in addressing the problem of hold-up by SEP (standard essential patent) holders,” according to a May 30 letter and report issued by the groups, which represent retail, auto and technology companies like Apple Inc., […]

Published: May 23, 2018

Publisher: Lexology

The High People’s Court of Guangdong issued guidelines for hearing standard essential patent (SEP) disputes (the SEP Guidelines – available here in Chinese) on April 26, 2018. The High People’s Court of Guangdong is one of China’s most important forums for IP disputes and acts as the appellate court of the IP tribunal of Shenzen, home to China’s most successful technology companies. The SEP Guidelines are primarily concerned with SEP disputes in […]

Published: May 18, 2018

Publisher: FOSS Patents

Given the importance of this subject, I’ll now republish an open letter that 77 former government officials and professors (of law, economics, and business) have sent Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim in order to remind him of long-standing and consistent U.S. policies on standard-essential patents (SEP) under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Mr. Delrahim’s outlier positions are disconcerting indeed. Access to standard-essential patents on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms is not […]