New PatentlyO Law Journal Essay: Is Global FRAND Litigation Spinning Out of Control?

New PatentlyO Patent Law Journal article by Thomas F. Cotter, Taft Stettinius & Hollister Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School, and Innovators Network Foundation Intellectual Property Fellow.  Professor Cotter is also the author of the Comparative Patent Remedies blog. 

Abstract:  It has often been observed that, while patent rights are territorial in scope, commerce is global and, increasingly, interconnected.  Indeed, with the advent of 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT), technical standards soon will enable not only devices such as smartphones and tablets, but also automobiles, medical devices, and even home appliances to receive and transmit data within and across national borders.  To achieve these ends, firms participate in standard-setting organizations (SSOs) to hammer out the technical standards that enable communication and interoperability among devices.  Moreover, because the implementation of these standards requires the use of many different, typically proprietary, technologies, SSOs generally encourage or require their members both to declare their ownership of patents that may be essential to the practice of the relevant standard, and to commit to licensing these standard-essential patents (SEPs) on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms.  The FRAND commitments themselves, in turn, often are interpreted as binding contracts for the benefit of third parties (that is, for the benefit of implementers).  In principle, these requirements work to ensure both that implementers are able to access essential technologies, and that owners are fairly compensated for their inventive contributions. 

Two problems nevertheless can impede the smooth working of such a system.  The first is that SSO rules typically do not define the term “FRAND,” for a variety of reasons.  Disputes over the meaning of FRAND therefore are inevitable.  The second is that, because patents are territorial, courts often have been reluctant to adjudicate foreign patent rights.  This understanding of patent rights, however, might appear, to some observers at least, to collide with commercial realities, when parties are unable to reach agreement and opt for adjudication by national courts.  Current responses to these problems are likely to prove unsatisfactory for both owners and implementers; a comprehensive solution nonetheless remains, for now, elusive.

Read: Thomas F. Cotter, Is Global FRAND Litigation Spinning Out of Control, 2021 PatentlyO Law Journal 1 (2021) (Cotter.2021.GlobalFRANDLitigation)

Prior Patently-O Patent L.J. Articles:

• Colleen V. Chien, Nicholas Halkowski, Maria He, and Rodney Swartz, Parsing the Impact of Alice and the PEG, 2020 Patently-O Law Journal 20 (2020) (Chien.2020.ImpactOfAlice)
• Paul R. Michel and John T. Battaglia, eBay, the Right to Exclude, and the Two Classes of Patent Owners, 2020 Patently-O Law Journal 11 (2020) (Michel.2020.RightToExclude)
• Thomas F. Cotter, Two Errors in the Ninth Circuit’s Qualcomm Opinion, 2020 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (2020). (Cotter.2020.TwoErrors.pdf)
• Jasper L. Tran & J. Sean Benevento, Alice at Five, 2019 PatentlyO L.J. 25 (2019) (Tran.2019.AliceatFive.pdf)
• Bernard Chao, Implementing Apportionment, 2019 PatentlyO L.J. 20 (Chao.2019.ImplementingApportionment)
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• Colleen Chien and Jiun-Ying Wu, Decoding Patentable Subject Matter, 2018 PatentlyO Patent Law Journal 1.
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• Bernard Chao, Not So Confidential: A Call for Restraint in Sealing Court Records, 2011 Patently-O Patent Patent Law Journal 6 (chao.sealedrecords.pdf)
• Benjamin Levi and Rodney R. Sweetland, The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Recommendations to the International Trade Commission (ITC):  Unsound, Unmeasured, and Unauthoritative, 2011 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (levi.ftcunsound.pdf)
• Kevin Emerson Collins, An Initial Comment on King Pharmaceuticals: The Printed Matter Doctrine as a Structural Doctrine and Its Implications for Prometheus Laboratories, 2010 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 111 (Collins.KingPharma.pdf)
• Robert A. Matthews, Jr., When Multiple Plaintiffs/Relators Sue for the Same Act of Patent False Marking, 2010 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 95 (matthews.falsemarking.pdf)
• Kristen Osenga, The Patent Office’s Fast Track Will Not Take Us in the Right Direction, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 89 (Osenga.pdf)
• Peter S. Menell,  The International Trade Commission’s Section 337 Authority, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 79
• Donald S. Chisum, Written Description of the Invention: Ariad (2010) and the Overlooked Invention Priority Principle, 2010 Patently‐O Patent L.J. 72
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• Etan Chatlynne, Investigating Patent Law’s Presumption of Validity—An Empirical Analysis, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 37
• Michael Kasdan and Joseph Casino, Federal Courts Closely Scrutinizing and Slashing Patent Damage Awards, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 24 (Kasdan.Casino.Damages)
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• Edward Reines and Nathan Greenblatt, Interlocutory Appeals of Claim Construction in the Patent Reform Act of 2009, Part II, 2010 Patently‐O Patent L.J. 7  (2010) (Reines.2010)
• Gregory P. Landis & Loria B. Yeadon, Selecting the Next Nominee for the Federal Circuit: Patently Obvious to Consider Diversity, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1 (2010) (Nominee Diversity)
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• John F. Duffy, The Death of Google’s Patents, 2008 Patently O-Pat. L.J. ___ (googlepatents101.pdf)
• Mark R. Patterson, Reestablishing the Doctrine of Patent Exhaustion, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 38
• Arti K. Rai, The GSK Case: An Administrative Perspective, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 36
• Joshua D. Sarnoff, BIO v. DC and the New Need to Eliminate Federal Patent Law Preemption of State and Local Price and Product Regulation, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 30 (Download Sarnoff.BIO.pdf)
• John F. Duffy, Are Administrative Patent Judges Unconstitutional?, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 21. (Duffy.BPAI.pdf)
• Joseph Casino and Michael Kasdan, In re Seagate Technology: Willfulness and Waiver, a Summary and a Proposal, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1 (Casino-Seagate)