United States Attorney General William Barr made headlines a few weeks ago when he announced the Department of Justice (DOJ) was actively investigating “Big Tech” over antitrust concerns. Pairing together “Big Tech” and “antitrust” is a veritable political Yahtzee these days, but the DOJ’s statements on antitrust are worth a [...]
By Craig Beuerlein and Graham Dufault The 2006 eBay Inc. v. MercExchange LLC decision (eBay) was a historic moment in U.S. patent policy. The eBay ruling establishes a precedent that decreases a small business’s financial burden when it must defend itself against a legal complaint that either asserts a weak patent or [...]
Talk of a trade war between the United States and China dominates today’s news cycle. As continued rounds of talks occur (and more are planned), the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)—the executive branch federal agency that works directly with foreign governments to negotiate trade agreements and to resolve [...]
In a highly-anticipated decision in the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust enforcement case against Qualcomm, U.S. District Court judge Lucy Koh found that Qualcomm’s licensing practices clearly violate U.S. antitrust law and rejected U.S. Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Makan Delrahim’s newfangled legal theory that competition law [...]
The agreement Apple and Qualcomm announced last week may have ended direct litigation between the two companies, but it did nothing to address the growing threat to competition and innovation caused by anticompetitive abuse of standard-essential patents (SEPs) by Qualcomm and others. That is why the alliance of companies, organizations, [...]