While COVID-19 may have temporarily slowed some of the day-to-day activities in the legal profession, the headlines show that the wars over standard essential patents (SEPs) and fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) licensing of SEPs persist without abandon. Appellate courts around the world previously had relatively few opportunities to offer guidance as to the licensing terms or the manner of negotiating licenses to SEPs. But recently, the highest civil courts in Germany and the United Kingdom handed down important decisions in disputes over SEPs and FRAND licensing relating to wireless communications.

For anyone unfamiliar with SEPs in the wireless communications industry, it can be difficult to understand the cross-border significance and importance of these recent decisions and those upcoming. An already complex area of law can become even more complicated when considering the anti-trust and contract issues that can arise around both licensing and not licensing SEPs at FRAND rates. This article aims to provide a foundational understanding of global enforcement strategies in addition to identifying a few takeaways from two of the area's most significant recent decisions.

• SEPs are associated with patents covering technologies that must be practiced for conformance with an established technical standard.

A technical standard can be viewed as a common set of rules by which industry participants agree to certain functionalities for making or using a product. Wireless communications, for example, are heavily standardized to ensure compatibility among different manufacturers' devices and mobile carriers. These rules are set forth by standards setting organizations (SSOs) and are typically based on contributions from member organizations. An industry participant may opt not to conform to the standards but, in doing so, it risks putting itself at a severe competitive disadvantage.