On November 29, 2017, the European Commission (EC) issued a highly-anticipated Communication on the licensing practices for standard essential patents (SEPs). The EC issued the Communication to provide a “balanced, smooth and predictable framework for SEPs” that will contribute to “the development of the Internet of Things and harnessing Europe's lead [...]
Last month, the Supreme Court of Korea, the Republic of Korea's highest court, issued an important ruling that will have a wide impact on standard essential patents (SEPs) and fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing practices. In December 2016, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) issued a Corrective Order against [...]
Europe has long been a leader in the development and deployment of both open standards as well as the technologies these standards drive. Everyone agrees that open standards play a critical role in interoperability, innovation, and competition. Open standards enabled me to build an ICT consulting firm in Alicante, Spain [...]
We’ve talked about patents a lot recently and one of our main points has always been that the best place to address patent quality is at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The USPTO plays a key role in promoting innovation by granting quality patents. The USPTO [...]
While the law allows courts to grant attorney fees to the winning party in a patent infringement case, many federal courts have opted not to award those fees. Courts have interpreted the standard for awarding fees, "exceptional circumstances" (35 U.S.C. §285), so high few, if any, cases have been able [...]