Every year members of ACT | The App Association make the trip from every corner of the United States to our nation’s capital for three days of education and advocacy. Enter: 2020, COVID-19, and our first totally virtual AppCon! AppCon’20 spanned across five weeks – weeks one through four were [...]
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is considering weakening its rules regarding Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing of patented technology required to implement its standards due to concerns raised by a few larger patent holders. These companies argue the existing policy threatens future participation in the organization’s [...]
The U.S. Department of Justice recently restored its 2015 Business Review Letter supporting key clarifications on standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing issues made by the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA). The App Association welcomes the DOJ Antitrust Division’s decision to restore the 2015 Business Review Letter in support of IEEE-SA’s efforts to clarify [...]
ACT |The App Association joined 41 other orgs supporting IEEE-SA’s patent policy in a letter to the standards organization. The 2015 IEEE-SA policy change is the prime example of a standard setting organization demonstrating leadership in providing clarity on the meaning of fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) commitments to make [...]
The licensing of standard-essential patents (SEPs) on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms is a longstanding issue. Recently, SEP licensing has attracted increasing attention as technological developments accelerate the proliferation of the internet of things (IoT). For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that develop devices for IoT use cases like [...]