Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. Department of Justice, and National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a joint statement on standard-essential patents (SEPs). The statement clarifies the agencies’ position on an earlier 2013 statement made by USPTO and DoJ while completing the process of formally withdrawing from that statement. In essence,…
Tag Archive for SEPs
Guest Post: Is Big Tech FRANDly to Competition?
by Charles Duan •
Charles Duan is the Director of Technology and Innovation Policy at the R Street Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. This post is cross-posted at the Disruptive Competition Project. On Tuesday, Apple released a new policy on its website relating to the obscure topic of “FRAND” licensing of patents. That’s an…
Voting Machines, Patents, and National Security
by Josh Landau •
When standard-essential patents (SEPs) are in the news, it’s usually in the context of cellular or wireless networking standards. Maybe you’ve thought about how standards govern other things, ranging from audio-visual encoding standards like MP3 to threads on fire hydrants. But what you probably don’t think about are voting machine standards.
EU Competition Authorities Fine Qualcomm While DoJ Says “No Problem”
by Josh Landau •
Yesterday, EU Commissioner for Competition Margarete Vestager announced the Commission’s decision to fine Qualcomm for using pricing and contract terms to force a rival out of the market. This fine follows another EU fine issued last year for Qualcomm’s use of exclusivity payments to avoid competition. If that sounds familiar, it’s because earlier this year,…
Anything Qualcomm Can Do, Huawei Can Do (Better?)
by Josh Landau •
With the settlement of the Apple-Qualcomm litigation, the fate of the FTC’s litigation against Qualcomm has become the next topic of interest in the standard-essential patent (SEP) sphere. There are a host of reasons why the FTC shouldn’t settle that relate to concerns about Qualcomm’s behavior and its impact on competition and consumers. But beyond…
Delrahim Out Of Step With FTC, Industry, Academics On FRAND/SEP
by Jacqueline Yin •
Jacqueline Yin is a Legal Fellow at the Computer & Communications Industry Association. This post is also online at Project DisCo. In the U.S., antitrust laws are typically enforced by both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). For example, the DOJ and FTC share the authority to enforce the…
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…
Standard Essential Patents In The News
by Josh Landau •
Standard essential patents (SEPs) are in the news today in a couple ways. First, the EU antitrust authorities fined Qualcomm $1.2 billion over conduct that involved locking Apple into an exclusive supplier arrangement in order to harm competing baseband chipset makers. The EU investigation isn’t the only place Qualcomm’s anti-competitive conduct is being challenged; they’ve…