First posted on spicyip.com on 15.08.2015 Some time back Ericsson announced a settlement of its pending disputes with True Position and Samsung. In the announcements, in True Position, Ericsson claimed that it "[T]akes pride in its technical leadership in wireless standard setting activities and looks forward to continuing to take a leading role in future 3GPP standard setting, including for LTE-Advanced and future generations of wireless technology." In the Samsung matter, Ericsson claimed that it is, "[C]ommitted to licensing its standard-essential patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms for the benefit of the industry. It believes that licensing according... Continue reading
SEP holders with huge portfolios many patents (SEPs) may find it exceedingly difficult (at least in Europe) to take legal action against parties for patent infringement after the European Court of Justice put the onus on them to offer fair licensing deals. Given the multitude of wayward decisions in Indian courts on SEPs and FRAND, I am not sure whether there would be any impact of the decision. However, it is my sincere hope that it does. Readers would remember my last post where I tried to show the extra territorial reach of SEPs when used in portfolio licensing and tried to make a case against it. The ECJ decisio n does discuss this issue briefly - albeit in a different co... Continue reading
One of the first things that law students are taught is that among the various rights granted by a sovereign, patents too are territorial in nature. Simply put, patents granted by India are valid in India, and not valid in United States (US) or Pakistan, etc. and vice versa.Existing scholarship including case law in the US, focuses on the outbound impact of intellectual property rights (IPR), with patent laws being the focus of attention. See, for example, US 35 USC § 271, and the related case law. These studies have focused on expansion and reach of high technology in foreign shores, and consequent violation of US IPR laws where the solution is to apply national IP laws on a ... Continue reading
First posted on spicyip.com on 29.03.2015 Earlier this month the Chinese Anti-trust authority (NDRC) gave its decision in the Qualcomm matter involving Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law (AML). This decision is a landmark decision where Qualcomm was found to have engaged in anti-competitive conduct relating to the licensing of standard essential patents (“SEPs”) for wireless communication technology and baseband chip sales. The original decision is available here. While a summary of the decision (based on Google translate) is also provided in this post, I have put in my comments in italics and I compare the approach taken by Indian courts / competition commission and the Chinese NDRC. Image... Continue reading
First posted on spicyip.com on 18.01.2015 In a decision issued by the US Federal Circuit that will have major repercussion on the evaluation models for standard essential patents (SEPs), the court gave substantial guidelines for determining an appropriate royalty base on which a royalty figure may be applied. In VirnetX, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc. (No. 2013-1489), the appeals court held that the district court had wrongly instructed the jury that in determining the royalty base for calculating damages, it should not use the value of the entire accused product unless “the product in question constitutes the smallest saleable unit containing the patented feature.” This logic can be... Continue reading