Last June, CCIA filed comments on the public interest issues implicated by Qualcomm’s ITC complaint against Apple. (The ITC is required to take into account whether the public interest would be harmed by exclusion.) Last month, the ITC Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) agreed with our comments, determining that an exclusion order was not in…
Blog Posts
Qualcomm Has Been Violating Its Obligation To License Competitors For Years
by Josh Landau •
Today, Judge Koh issued an important ruling in the FTC v. Qualcomm litigation centered on Qualcomm’s anti-competitive trade practices. Ruling on a motion for partial summary judgment, Judge Koh determined that Qualcomm is obligated to license its standard-essential patents to anyone who asks for a license. Qualcomm admits that it refuses to license other modem…
FTC Hearings #4: Patents, Intellectual Property, and Innovation
by Josh Landau •
This post has been cross-posted to DisCo. Last week, the FTC held the fourth in its set of hearings focusing on “Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century.” The first day focused on a review of the current landscape of intellectual property and competition. The second day featured a variety of panels focusing on…
Founders On Patents: Jefferson On A Farm Patent
by Josh Landau •
Last week, I covered a newly digitized letter from John Q. Adams, describing the concern the PTO’s first Commissioner had regarding whether the patents he was issuing were really valid and the harms that those invalid patents were causing. Along those lines, let’s see what another Founding Father—Thomas Jefferson—had to say about a patent on…
IPR And Alice Appear Responsible For Reduced Patent Litigation Costs
by Josh Landau •
Patent litigation costs have dropped significantly over the past few years, after a steady series of increases over the previous decade. This drop has sometimes been attributed to the use of inter partes review and to the Alice decision. The chart below, created based on data from the AIPLA Report of the Economic Survey, shows…
The PTO’s Inability To Reject An Application For Good Has A Long History
by Josh Landau •
I was recently alerted1 to an entry in John Q. Adams’ diary, pertaining to patents in the early days of the United States. The entry, from Dec. 27, 1804, reads: “Next I called at Dr. [William] Thornton’s Office, acting under the Secretary of State as Commissioner of Patents; to speak with him regarding the application…
Cisco, Google, MIT, and USPTO Team Up To Create Prior Art Archive
by Josh Landau •
One of the biggest problems in patent examination is actually finding prior art. When it comes to patents and patent applications, that’s relatively easy—examiners have access to databases of all patents and applications, and they’re well-trained in searching those databases. But when it comes to non-patent prior art—product manuals, journal articles, standards proposals, and other…
Additional Studies Show IPR Is Not A Threat To Hatch-Waxman Process
by Josh Landau •
Over a year ago, I took a look at a study of the success rate for inter partes reviews (IPRs) of pharmaceutical patents. That study showed that drug and biologic patents are significantly more likely to be upheld at the PTAB than the average patent. Recently, there’s been a wave of additional studies looking at…
ITC: No Public Interest In Excluding Qualcomm Competitors
by Josh Landau •
Over a year ago, I filed comments at the International Trade Commission (ITC). Those comments explained why it went against the public interest to exclude Qualcomm’s competitors products from the U.S. market based on Qualcomm’s patent infringement allegations. Last week, the ITC administrative law judge in charge of the case agreed. What’s At Stake? About…
Yet More Evidence That NPEs Are Harmful To Innovation
by Josh Landau •
Profs. Cohen, Gurun, and Kominers first published a paper collecting evidence of the impacts of NPEs on innovation in 2014. Recently, they updated the paper, incorporating additional evidence and research from the past four years. The key takeaways? “NPE litigation has a real negative impact on innovation at targeted firms: firms substantially reduce their innovative…