Published: 4/1/16

Publication: Financial Express

Times change, and so do business models. This is especially true for licensing of standard-essential patents (SEPs). What was an excellent business practice in the 1990s is not a viable business strategy today. The cross-licensing rates of those days cannot be used as a benchmark today. If old rates are used, then it would jeopardise Digital India and Make-in-India initiatives.

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Published: 4/1/16

Publication: Lexology

A number of national competition agencies have recently been reviewing their IPR guidelines giving rise to some interesting trends and developments…

On 31 March 2016 the Canadian Competition Bureau released updated IPR Enforcement Guidelines (the “Canadian IPR Guidelines”) (see here for a press release and here for the Enforcement Guidelines themselves). The main revisions to the Canadian IPR Guidelines focus on the Bureau’s position on patent settlements and product switching in the pharma sector as well as the conduct […]

Published: 3/12/16

Publication: Rebecca Tushnet’s 43(B)log

Jorge L. Contreras, “Private Ordering or Public Law? The Legal Character of Technical Standard Setting”: Private ordering structure arises when public enforcement mechanisms are unavailable (crime syndicates, rural settings) or less efficient/logical (credit rating, accounting standards). Standard setting: collaboration among competitors; technical focus, not legal; ideally the priority is on optimizing solutions—wi-fi, USB (my favorite USB joke). Most standard-setting bodies have formal policies about due process, and also about patents (disclosure requirement, […]

Published: 3/10/16

Publication: Comparative Patent Remedies

For all the scrutiny the U.S. government has given to standard essential patents (SEPs) in recent years and to the commitment to license them under […]

Published: 3/10/16

Publication: Lexology

In recent years, the term ‘standard-essential patent’ has become a buzzword in Chinese antitrust practice. Standard-essential patents raise numerous issues, including with regard to the application boundaries of the Anti-monopoly Law, the balance between public and private rights and the future direction of enforcement and judicial practice.

The question of how to assess standard-essential patent-related activities under the framework of the Anti-monopoly Law has attracted the attention of both the antitrust authorities and players in […]

Published: 3/8/16

Publication: Kluwer Patent Blog

Consider this hypothetical: a company discovered a new compound and obtained a patent on the compound. Later, this compound was discovered to be ten times harder than diamond. Soon, cutting tools made with this new compound replaced all other types of cutting tools, including diamond tools. Two years later, the company was garnering more than 90% of the cutting tool market in China. If the company refuses a reasonable licensing request, would this […]