The Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) Regulation Proposal also known as the IP Action Plan formally issued by the European Commission today suggests groundbreaking changes to the standard essential patent landscape as we know it. The SEPs Regulation Proposal indicates the European Commission’s desire to establish four major requirements for SEPs holders and implementers. These are…
Although a silent technological revolution is currently taking place in the tobacco industry, there is no publicly available data on patents that read on tobacco harm-reduction technologies. We recently conducted a patent analysis and found that, in the developing world, there are only few patents filed relating to tobacco harm reduction. This stands in stark…
In the aftermath of the landmark decision ‘Unwired Planet vs Huawei’, a series of other FRAND litigations have followed suit. Cases such as Conversant vs ZTE/Huawei, Philips vs TCL, TQ Delta v ZyXel or Optis v Apple pertain equally to the licensing of standard essential patents. From an economic perspective this raises the question as…
The strategic management of IP requires a new understanding of what IP is and what role it can play in a corporate context. Understanding IP as an internal resource to a firm rather than a negative right, allows a firm to exploit IP beyond its current usage. Genuine IP meets all the criteria of what…
Building the Patent Fence The practice of IP management is a recent discipline. Traditionally, IP departments have been run by members of the legal profession. Often, they are under the supervision of General Counsel. As such, their role has historically been defined from a risk management perspective. ‘Help the firm stay out of trouble and…
As reported on Kluwer Patent Blog, the Supreme Court of England and Wales issued a key decision in the Case of Huawei and ZTE vs Conversant and Unwired Planet. Both lawsuits pertain to standard essential patents and seek to resolve how address international commercial activity from a legal perspective. The cases offer a wealth of…
The many opportunities provided by managing patents under an open innovation paradigm have so far not found the attention they deserve among the patent community. The nationalist approaches prevailing in the search for a vaccine to coronavirus provide ample support for this statement. A look at the academic literature on patents helps to understand the…
Emerging Vaccine Nationalism ‘Vaccine nationalism’ could slow the search for a cure for Covid19. [1] The nationalism that prevails in the fight for a Covid19 vaccine is not only overshadowed by the geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, but also by individual nations seeking to find a cure on their own. In the…
