5/3/2021· Intellectual Property
One-Stop-Shopping With Segmented Offerings Is Most Appealing For SEP Licensing In IoT Including 5G
By: Keith Mallinson
Patent pooling is increasingly attractive for licensing cellular technologies with emerging IoT including 5G because it can provide greater transparency, predictability, and various efficiencies such as lower transaction costs at scale in standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing with multiple dimensions and complexities including
11/17/2020· Intellectual Property
Valuing SEP portfolios And Determining FRAND rates: How, And Who Should "get it done"?
By: Keith Mallinson
While there is much uncertainty about the outlook for standard-essential patent royalty rates in court determinations, there are plenty of solid benchmarks in well-established comparable licenses (“comps”). The former rates are thin on the ground and have been made up based on some dubious and fiercely...
4/3/2020· Intellectual Property
By: Scott D. Hampton
On February 24, 2020, VirnetX announced the U.S. Supreme Court denied Apple’s petition for a writ of certiorari. Apple had asked the High Court to consider the Federal Circuit’s claimed misguided use of prior license agreements to calculate patent infringement damage awards without satisfying the Supreme Court’s precedent that an apportionment between patented and non-patented features of multi-component products be performed in every case
2/25/2019· Intellectual Property
Adjusting the Balance in SEP Evaluations and Licensing
By: Keith Mallinson
A European Commission DG Growth initiative described in its Roadmap on Standard Essential Patents for a European digitalised economy aims to increase information on SEPs so implementers can get a better idea about which of these they might be infringing. Additional disclosures on how patent claims might read on the standards could be beneficial. Requirements should reflect the dynamics and uncertainties in standards development and patent prosecution and must not be onerous to patent owners. These are issues for standards development organisations to consider.
12/28/2018· Intellectual Property
Commercially Reasonable Efforts - How an Expert Can Help
By: Peter Crosby
Imagine this scenario: Early stage company Smallco develops an exciting new technology, which it uses to create the prototype of its first product - Brakethroo! A large company in the same field, Bigco, becomes aware of Brakethroo, and realizes that if the product works as hoped, it could be a valuable addition to Bigco's product range. Bigco offers to buy the technology and product from the shareholders of Smallco. The merger and acquisition (M&A) agreement specifies an up-front payment, and one or more payments dependent on achievement of milestones. Bigco agrees to use "commercially reasonable efforts" to achieve the milestones. Smallco and Bigco sign the agreement, the shareholders of Smallco get an immediate payout and look forward to further milestone payments.
9/12/2018· Intellectual Property
Development of Innovative New Standards Jeopardised by IEEE Patent Policy
By: Keith Mallinson
In March 2015, IEEE significantly amended its patent policy in what was couched as an "update" but that seeks to significantly revise commitments from parties holding patent claims essential to IEEE standards to license those rights on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms. Changes disallow patent holders from receiving any value attributable to the standards, require licensing at the smallest saleable patent practicing unit level, and deny these rights holders entitlement to seek an injunction against an unlicensed implementer until appellate review is exhausted. IEEE’s stated objective was to protect implementers from patent holdup, which was alleged without any substantiation.[1] IEEE is promoting, by reducing technology licensing costs, the short-term interests of certain implementers while undermining standard-essential patent values and the ability of SEP owners to receive adequate compensation, they are entitled to, from licensing their SEPs.
7/30/2018· Intellectual Property
Independent Judiciary Requires Reliability and Factual Credibility in Economic Analysis
By: Keith Mallinson
In a major ruling that underscores judicial independence, federal judge Richard J. Leon has just unconditionally approved the merger between AT&T and Time Warner, rebuffing the US government's effort to stop the $85.4 billion deal.
12/27/2017· Intellectual Property
Tide turns in US and EU agencies' policies on SEP licensing
By: Keith Mallinson
The new US Department of Justice antitrust leader says antitrust enforcers are too accommodating to IP implementers when in dispute with standard-essential patent owners. Instead, patent owners should be allowed to decide how they want to exercise their property rights: "under the antitrust laws, a unilateral refusal to license a valid patent should be per se legal" – he also reminds us "the right to exclude is one of the most fundamental bargaining rights the patent owner possesses."
8/21/2017· Intellectual Property
Viral Videos Challenging the Enforcement of Copyrights
By: Scott D. Hampton
In an effort to move United States copyright law into the digital age, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998. The DMCA is the beginning of an ongoing effort to modernize the nation's copyright law.1 In an ever-changing digital world, copyright law must continue to evolve with technology.
12/9/2015· Intellectual Property
Apportioning Copyright Damages: The Case of 'Blurred Lines'
By: Doug Bania
Most of the existing literature on copyright infringement is concerned with the valuation of intellectual property rather than the apportionment of the value that is directly attributable to the intellectual property asset at issue. Further, few of the currently proposed IP valuation methods and little of the literature addressing the determination of damages appears directly applicable to the case of copyright in the context of artistic productions. Within the creative arts, recorded music offers a particularly complex and interesting case within which to explore this issue, as different portions of the relevant copyright to the recorded song may be held by different persons.
by Jon Burroughs, MD, FACHE
by The American Institute of Architects
by Gale Prince
