Today, the Supreme Court declined to overrule its prior decision in Brulotte v. Thys Co., 379 U.S. 29 (1964), and maintained its ruling that a patent holder cannot charge royalties for the use of his invention where the use occurs after the patent term has expired.  The Supreme Court held that stare decisis

Yesterday, Qualcomm issued a press release announcing resolution of the investigation under China’s Anti-Monopoly Law by China’s National Development and Reform Commission (“NDRC”) of Qualcomm’s licensing practice for standard essential patents.  In addition to Qualcomm paying a $975 million fine, the China’s NDRC approved Qualcomm’s proposed rectification plan, summarized as follows:

  • Qualcomm will offer licenses

The Northern District of California recently granted judgment on the pleadings in favor of patent-plaintiff ChriMar Systems, Inc. on antitrust and state law unfair competition counterclaims filed by accused infringers Cisco and Hewlett-Packard (HP).  According to the court, the crux of Cisco’s and HP’s counterclaims alleged that ChriMar failed to disclose and commit to license

Yesterday, the Second Circuit in Lotus v. Hon Hai Precision affirmed the district court’s dismissal of antitrust and breach of contract claims arising from foreign activity based on the patent owner not licensing, but asserting in litigation in China, patents subject to FRAND-Z (i.e., royalty free) standard setting obligations.  Consistent with the U.S. Federal Trade

Yesterday, the European Commission issued decisions in two antitrust proceedings centered around the enforcement of standard essential patents (SEPs). The decisions, one involving Samsung and the other Motorola, essentially create a “safe harbour” for willing licensees of FRAND-encumbered SEPs to avoid an injunction and address the circumstances under which an SEP holder may seek injunctive

Well that didn’t take long — yesterday the Ninth Circuit dismissed LSI’s appeal from Judge Whyte’s preliminary injunction that enjoined LSI from seeking to enforce any exclusion order entered by the ITC on the standard essential patents at issue in the district court litigation before LSI first offered a RAND license to Realtek.  Our March

As a reminder that standard essential patent issues go beyond information technology, last week SawStop LLC sued manufacturers of table saws alleging that they conspired to convince Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. (“UL”) to not adopt SawStop’s patented table saw safety technology into UL standard 987 (Stationary and Fixed Electric Tools) and to adopt a different technology

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced that it was closing its investigation into Samsung’s use of standard essential patents, which investigation had “focused on Samsung’s attempts to use its SEPs to obtain exclusion orders from the [ITC] relating to certain iPhone and iPad models.”  DOJ stated that further investigation was no longer

In an order dated January 16, 2014, the Competition Commission of India (“CCI”) ordered another investigation into Ericsson’s licensing of cellular patents that are subject to FRAND obligations, which investigation will parallel a similar investigation of Ericsson that CCI ordered on November 12, 2013 (discussed in our prior post).  The rationale for this