Published: 1/10/17

Publication: ACT | The App Association

“On Wednesday, December 28, 2016, the Korea Fair Trade Commission’s (KFTC) Anti-Monopoly Bureau issued a decision imposing sanctions against Qualcomm Incorporated (Qualcomm) in the amount of 1.03 trillion Korean Won (approximately $865 million USD) for alleged violations of Korean competition laws. 

After conducting a comprehensive investigation that spanned for more than a year and issuing its examination report to Qualcomm on November 13, 2015, the KFTC found that Qualcomm, […]

Published: 1/10/16

Publication: Wall Street Journal

Qualcomm Inc. asked a U.S. federal court to compel some of its biggest customers and competitors—including Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.—to hand over any documents they provided to South Korean antitrust authorities investigating the U.S. chip maker.

Read More

Published: 1/9/17

Publication: Lexology

“The Marseille Commercial Court recently ruled that the sending of letters to the customers of a smartphone creator and seller warning them against possible infringement constituted offers for a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licence and was thus not considered unfair competition.(1)

The case is the first French FRAND case to be initiated after the ruling in Huawei v ZTE by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on July 16 2015. […]

Published: 1/6/16

Publication: IAM

As always, the arrival of the new year provides an opportunity to set out grand plans for the twelve months to come and indulge in a bit of optimism about what can be accomplished in that time span. Patent offices are no different, and today we look at year-end statements from the Japan Patent Office (JPO) and China’s State Council in an attempt to read the tea leaves and find out what two of Asia’s […]

Published: 1/6/16

Publication: Comparative Patent Remedies

As mentioned previously on this blog (see here and here), district courts in Düsseldorf and in Mannheim recently have issued injunctions in favor of the owners of FRAND-encumbered SEPs.  Interestingly, in both cases the entity asserting the patents was a nonpracticing entity.  The courts left many questions open but both applied what is arguably a fairly narrow reading of the CJEU’s 2015 judgment in Huawei v. ZTE.

Read More

Published: 1/2/14

Publication: The Economic Times

This op-ed discusses the application of India’s Competition Act to breaches of FRAND commitment. It states that “India’s Competition Act is equipped to deal with scenarios where the SEP holder reneges on Frand commitments. This would generally attract the Act’s provisions against ‘abuse of dominance’ (Section 4).” It states that such abuse “includes charging an unfair (read, excessive) price and discrimination between equally placed customers. For example, if the royalty charged is based […]