Tuesday, January 17, 2017

JRC Report on the Licensing Terms of SEPs

The Joint Research Centre (JRC), "the European Commission’s science and knowledge service," has just published a report titled Licensing Terms of Standard Essential Patents:  A Comprehensive Analysis of Cases, available here.  The authors are Chryssoula Pentheroudakis and Justus A. Baron, and the editor Nikolaus Thumm.  I'll have more to say about this report after I read it, but I thought readers of this blog would like to hear about it right away.  (Hat tip to Dr. Pentheroudakis for calling it to my attention.)  Here is the abstract:
The prospect of licensing patents that are essential to standards on an industry-wide scale is a major incentive for companies to invest in standardization activities. Most standard development organizations (SDOs) have defined intellectual property rights (IPR) policies whereby SDO members must commit to licensing their standard-essential patents (SEPs) on Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. This study aims to provide a consistent framework for both the interpretation of FRAND commitments and the definition of FRAND royalties. Our methodology is built on the analysis of landmark and significant decisions taken by courts and competition authorities in Europe and worldwide. The purpose of the comparative analysis is to provide a comprehensive overview of how FRAND licensing terms have been defined in the evolving case law, while testing the economic soundness of the concepts and methodologies applied by courts and antitrust authorities.

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