Anderson

A European Commission DG Growth initiative described in its Roadmap on Standard Essential Patents for a European digitalised economy aims to increase information on SEPs so implementers can get a better idea about which of these they might be infringing. Additional disclosures on how patent claims might read on the standards could be beneficial. Requirements should reflect the dynamics and uncertainties in standards development and patent prosecution and must not be onerous to patent owners. These are issues for standards development organisations to consider. A report DG Growth commissioned in support of its initiative entitled Transparency, Predictability, and Efficiency of SSO-based Standardization and SEP Licensing (the CRA report) proposes that SDOs or the European Patent Office could also help meet this objective by being appointinted the central assessor that would screen patent disclosures to determine and count which patents are truly essential. This would be undesirable in...

The Roadmap onStandard Essential Patents for a European Digitalised Economy from the European Commission’s DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG Growth) sets out how it believes increasing transparency on standard-essential patents and its other objectives with SEPs and FRAND licensing might be achieved.  A study report commissioned by DG Growth in support of this initiative on Transparency, Predictability and Efficiency of SSO-based Standardization and SEP Licensing (the CRA report) proposes, among various other recommendations, that declared patents and patent applications should be centrally assessed by standard-setting organizations or by the European Patent Office to determine whether they are actually essential to standards including those developed by ETSI for 3G, 4G and 5G. A path to price regulation This intervention is unwarranted and results would be unreliable. It would introduce various inaccuracies with significant subjectivity, biases and wou...

Relecura , the data analytics firm, has released its interesting and thorough Internet of Things – Technology Landscape and IP Commercialization Trends Report.   The report includes a helpful slide on the technology stack in IOT to understand the layers of relevant technologies necessary and another slide on hot application growth areas.   The report also includes a breakdown of key players in the space and strategy.   The patent landscape portion of the report includes the following “high level findings”: The top patent holders are from diverse sectors like consumer electronics (Samsung, LG, Sony); telecom (Huawei, Ericsson, Korea Electronics Telecom, ZTE), and software (IBM, Microsoft). • Qualcomm is the leading filer in multiple jurisdictions as well as PCT filings. This suggests an intention to license its technologies worldwide. • The network layer has the highest number of patent filings and accounts for 62% of all the IoT patents. • Samsung is a key patent holder...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has started a program called Reclaim Invention .   The premise of the program is to ensure that universities, particularly public universities, are not licensing patents to so-called patent trolls.   There are basically two prongs to the effort: 1) mobilizing people involved with universities to pressure universities to sign a patent pledge—essentially volunteering to engage in certain conduct concerning university inventions and licensing; 2) pushing state legislatures to adopt legislation restricting universities licensing practices.   The EFF’s proposed legislation includes the following two thrusts : First, it requires university technology transfer offices to adopt a policy committing them to manage patent assets in the public interest. University policy should include: researching the past practices of potential patent buyers or licensees; prioritizing technology transfer that develops inventions and scales their ...

OxFirst is presenting another free webinar, which appears to be another in the line of quality programs. The topic will be- ‘Assessing Damages under the IPR Enforcement Directive’, and it will take place on May 17th, 2017, 3:00 PM- 4:00 PM GMT | 16:00-17:00 CET. The speakers will be Dr Roya Ghafele and Rasmus Kamstrup Bogetoft. The program is described as follows: The talk is first of its kind to draw together a range of different publicly sanctioned sources that provide instructions on how to value intellectual property. We apply these to illustrate how damages can be assessed under the IPRED. In doing so, we seek to contribute to a more educated way of how to assess damages under the IPR Enforcement Director. In doing so, we fill an important gap: While the IPRED contains a host of principles discussing how to assess damages, there are no guidelines, commentaries or further explanations that would help the Court to understand how to translate these overarching guidelines into c...

In a recent article by Claire Huang, The Business Times has announced a $1 billion fund in Singapore designed to help a number of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) with strong intellectual property portfolios to “go global.”   The fund is a collaboration between the government of Singapore and the private equity firm Makara Capital.   The article notes: Makara's managing director Ali Ijaz Ahmad listed five areas of focus for the fund: Urban solutions including logistics and security; Fintech; Alternative energy; Advanced tech such as artificial intelligence and cyber-security; and Healthcare and bio-medicine. The companies will be selected based on criteria such as having a defensible IP, strong managerial talent and pan-Asian growth potential. They will be able to tap into Ipos's expertise and networks and Makara's commercially-driven approach to turn their innovations into assets and revenue through Singapore. The article is available, here . ...