At the end of last year, Judge Selna of the U.S. District Court for the Central District California issued a very significant decision in TCL v. Ericsson, a case centering on a license royalty dispute between a major Chinese cell phone maker and Ericsson, the owner of a large number of standard-essential patents (SEPs) for 3G and 4G mobile service.
This decision now joins a handful of other recent influential court decisions in the U.S. and the U.K. that have each devised their own methodology to calculate fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) for SEPs.
Our panel, includes two academic experts on SEPs, both of whom have also practiced law, and a Brussels-based competition lawyer. They will discuss:
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the “top down” approach implemented in the TCL and Unwired Planet decisions vs. the “bottom up” approach of Microsoft v. Motorola? Is there a consensus emerging?
- What are the implications of the non-discrimination prong of the TCL decision that says that small players in a market should not have to pay higher royalty rates than big players?
- How does recent SEP competition policy in Europe differ from that in the U.S.—-, and what has changed with the recent release of the European Commission’s Communication on Standard Essential Patents?
This webinar will help listeners understand where FRAND jurisprudence is heading, a critically important issue, for those who care about standards and FRAND. Judge Selna’s decision is of great interest, for the details of how he set the royalty rates for the technology at issue. It is being compared with an important recent British decision. Unwired Planet v. Huawei, and the earlier U.S. decision Microsoft v. Motorola
Speakers:
- Jorge Contreras, University of Utah
- Thomas Cotter, University of Minnesota
- Christopher Thomas, Hogan Lovells
