With the "Patent war" among, mainly, smartphone vendors brought the US and European regulators to call for patent rules to be "improved" following complaints about the way some smartphone makers had sought to defend their rights.
In my view some or most of these patents "in the patent war" are not considered within FRAND as they are not seen “essential patents” .... so to solve this issue new guidelines are required to handle the "non-essential patents" competing in the same market place.
The BBC article is here.
In my view some or most of these patents "in the patent war" are not considered within FRAND as they are not seen “essential patents” .... so to solve this issue new guidelines are required to handle the "non-essential patents" competing in the same market place.
The BBC article is here.
Great post.
ReplyDeleteWhat is "FRAND" is an interesting debate, if only because what is "fair and reasonable" to some is entirely unfair and unreasonable to another. FRAND licensing is particularly challenging in the Free / open source software world, where FRAND can effectively lock-out open source developers.
Conversely, if patents' teeth are to be removed, such that there is little benefit in having a patent, this rather questions the whole regime, to my mind.
I do think the issue of whether the patent regime is suitable at all is a worthy discussion to have, just as I think it's reasonable to revisit the laws of copyright. It seems to me that the heyday of patents was some years back, when innovation was more in the remit of the man in the shed, inventing and solving problems. Rather than a realistically searchable archive of knowledge, patents are now more of a minefield, which, I think, has a stifling impact on innovation. If even an experienced patent searcher could miss a patent, resulting in potentially significant exposure, I don't think that the man in the shed has much chance at all.
(I think, although I could be wrong, that some of the patents at issue are design patents, which we'd probably recognise as a registered design in Europe; I think it's probably reasonable to treat these patents/designs separately, particularly since they are unlikely to be essential.)
my question would be; when the regulator demand this clarification it should be based on who's law (which country's law)?
ReplyDeleteThat's a very good question. There is a patent cooperation treaty, but I don't know much, if anything, about it — whether this would be a good vehicle or not, I don't know.
ReplyDeleteWhatever, it needs to be something which has an international effect — the patent system is already sufficiently different between the US and the EU, particularly in terms of software, to be problematic in terms of smartphones today, I'd suggest. Need it cover the far east too, where the factories tend to be, or are the factories less of an issue?