The Fall season brings not only football, changing leaves and pumpkins, but also many program opportunities on your favorite legal issues — ours being standard essential patents.  Here are some program opportunities in the coming weeks to consider:

Today, Tuesday Oct. 13 at 2pm – 3pm Eastern, Intellectual Property Owners Association IP Chat Channel

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 IEEE apparently is considering an unusual change to its intellectual property rights (“IPR”) policy that in many ways is contrary to developing U.S. law on determining a reasonable royalty rate and the availability of injunctive relief for standard essential patents (“SEPs”).  The IEEE provides a link to the current draft of this proposed IPR

The European Commission’s Directorate-General (“DG”) for Enterprise and Industry has initiated a “Public Consultation on Patents and Standards“, seeking to gather public input on the relationship between the standardization of technical specifications and related intellectual property rights. The comment period is open now through January 31, 2015 . The public consultation seeks comment

In the midst of ongoing litigation against Nokia and HTC abroad, German patent monetization firm IPCom’s claim of patent infringement against Apple will be heard before Germany’s Mannheim Regional Court next Tuesday, February 11 (see our Januray 2013 post for some additional information on how patent litigation and RAND issues are handled in Germany).  IPCom

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

In an order dated November 12, 2013, the Competition Commission of India ordered an investigation into Ericsson’s licensing of cellular patents that are subject to FRAND obligations for certain ETSI standards.  This investigation is based on information provided by Micromax Informatics Limited (“the Informant”)  that had been approached by Ericsson (“the Opposite Party” or

Yesterday the European Commission started soliciting public comments on Samsung’s proposed commitment that, during the next five years, Samsung would not seek injunctive relief within the European Economic Area (EEA) on standard essential patents (SEPs) in the field of mobile communications against companies that agree to a particular framework for determining fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory

The National Academy of Sciences has published a 140-page report entitled “Patent Challenges for Standard-Setting in the Global Economy: Lessons from Information and Communication Technology.”  The report presents several suggestions to standard setting organizations (SSOs) or government bodies regarding standard essential patents (SEPs) in a few topic areas:

  • Interpretation of FRAND: Suggests that SSOs