Standard Essential Patents and FRAND Licensing: Anything But 'Standard'
In his Patent and Trademark Law column, Rob Maier writes: Standard essential patent litigation is anything but "standard," especially when it comes to determining remedies for patents that must be licensed under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.
March 24, 2020 at 12:30 PM
9 minute read
Standard essential patent (SEP) litigation is anything but "standard," especially when it comes to determining remedies for patents that must be licensed under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. Court decisions in recent years have outlined a number of different ways these issues can be handled, and parties still today are left with some uncertainty as to which approach to setting FRAND terms will stand.
Background on SEPs and FRAND
Standard essential patents (SEPs) cover technology that must be used in order to comply with an interoperability standard, such as the 3G and LTE standards for cellular telecommunications. These standards are typically developed by standard setting organizations (SSOs) comprised of members from companies across a given industry, all of whom work together to set the requirements and features of a new standard. The success of a standard depends on interoperability to achieve widespread use by numerous different participants in a given technology ecosystem.
In a cellular telephone network standard, for example, these industry participants can include mobile phone manufacturers and cellular service companies. If, say, a cellular service company owns a patent that covers the process by which a mobile phone must connect to a cellular tower, the cellular service company could in theory block other cellular service companies from connecting phones to their cell towers, or block mobile phone manufacturers from selling phones that connect to the cellular network.
If only a few select industry participants are permitted to implement such a standard, the standard can suffer, and consumers lose—the net result would be haphazard implementation and failure to achieve the widespread use that is the goal of standard setting organizations in the first place. In this sense, the goals of standard setting organizations, and the issuance of SEPs that allow a patent holder to restrict the use of standards, are at odds.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
NOT FOR REPRINT
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Law Firms Mentioned
Trending Stories
- 1The Law Firm Disrupted: For Big Law Names, Shorter is Sweeter
- 2Wine, Dine and Grind (Through the Weekend): Summer Associates Thirst For Experience in 'Real Matters'
- 3The 'Biden Effect' on Senior Attorneys: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
- 4BD Settles Thousands of Bard Hernia Mesh Lawsuits
- 5First Lawsuit Filed Alleging Contraceptive Depo-Provera Caused Brain Tumor
Featured Firms
Law Offices of Gary Martin Hays & Associates, P.C.
(470) 294-1674
Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone
(857) 444-6468
Smith & Hassler
(713) 739-1250