Archives For FRAND

If Necessity Is the Mother of Invention, New EU SEP Rules Are Decidedly Unnecessary

Giuseppe Colangelo & Geoffrey A. Manne —  25 April 2023

An unofficial version of the EU’s anticipated regulatory proposal on standard essential patents (SEPs), along with a related impact assessment, was leaked earlier this month, generating reactions that range from disquiet to disbelief (but mostly disbelief).

Our friend Igor Nikolic wrote about it here on Truth on the Market, and we share his his concern that:

As it currently stands, it appears the regulation will significantly increase costs to the most innovative companies that participate in multiple standardization activities. It would, for instance, regulate technology prices, limit the enforcement of patent rights, and introduce new avenues for further delays in SEP-licensing negotiations.

It also might harm the EU’s innovativeness on the global stage and set precedents for other countries to regulate, possibly jeopardizing how the entire international technical-standardization system functions.

Dubious Premises

The regulation originates from last year’s call by the European Commission to establish principles and implement measures that will foster a “balanced,” “smooth,” and “predictable” framework for SEP licensing. With this in mind, the reform aims “to promote an efficient and sustainable SEP licensing ecosystem, where the interests of both SEP holders and implementers are considered” [emphasis added]. As explicitly mentioned in the call, the main problems affecting the SEP ecosystem are holdup, holdout, and forum shopping. 

Unfortunately, it is far from clear these premises are correct or that they justify the sort of regulation the Commission now contemplates. 

The draft regulation purports to fix a broken regime by promoting efficient licensing and ensuring a fair balance between the interests of patent holders and implementers, in order to mitigate the risks of both holdup and holdout as requested in well-established case law and, in particular, by the Court of Justice’s (CJEU) landmark Huawei v. ZTE case.

There is, however, scant evidence that the current SEP-licensing regime is inefficient or unbalanced. The best evidence is that SEP-reliant industries are no less efficient than other innovative industries. Likewise, SEP holders do not appear to be capturing the lion’s share of profits in the industries where they operate. In short, it’s not clear that there is any problem to solve in the first place.

There is also scant evidence that the Commission has taken account of hugely important geopolitical considerations. Policymakers are worried that Chinese companies (with the support of Chinese courts and authorities) may use  litigation strategies to obtain significantly lower “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” (FRAND) rates.

Indeed, the EU filed a case against China at the World Trade Organization (WTO) last year that complained about the strategic use of anti-suit injunctions (ASIs)—that is, orders restraining a party either from pursuing foreign proceedings or enforcing a judgment obtained in foreign proceedings. As explained in a recent paper, this trend could have severe economic repercussions, given that the smooth implementation of mobile-telecommunication standards is crucial to the economic potential of both the so-called “Internet of Things” and U.S. communications infrastructure writ large.

By disproportionately targeting inventors (as we argue below), the draft regulation penalizes precisely those companies that, from the perspective of geopolitics, it should be protecting (or, at least, not undermining). Indeed, as the Commission’s impact assessment warns, the share of SEPs owned by Chinese companies has increased dramatically in recent years. Penalizing European inventors will only exacerbate this trend.

Missing the Mark

Given the importance of achieving a balance between holdup and holdout, as well as avoiding steps that could reinforce China’s position on the geopolitical map, the leaked version of the forthcoming EU regulation is deeply concerning, to say the least. 

Rather than wrestling with these complex issues, the proposal essentially focuses on ensuring that implementers receive licenses at affordable royalty rates. In other words, it would create significant red tape and compliance costs in an attempt to address an issue that is mostly peripheral to the stated aims, and arguably already dealt with by EU courts in Huawei v. ZTE. That decision, notably, forces parties to negotiate royalties in good faith before they can pursue judicial remedies, such as ASIs. 

Critically, the proposal surmises that there is currently little transparency regarding the aggregate royalties that implementers pay for all the SEPs that underpin a standard. The proposal assumes that making this information public would enable implementers to make better determinations when they negotiate royalties. 

To address this, the proposal creates several mandatory procedures that ultimately serve to make information on total royalty burdens public. It also creates a procedure that parties can use to obtain nonbinding FRAND royalty determinations from third-party arbitrators. More precisely, if contributors do not agree on an aggregate royalty sufficiently early before components and products implementing the standardized technology are put on the market, implementers and/or contributors can ask the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) to appoint conciliators with recommending an aggregate royalty (with exceedingly limited ability to appeal such decisions).

The proposal has at least two important drawbacks. 

To start, it is unclear what a nonbinding royalty recommendation would achieve. On the one hand, backers might hope the nonbinding recommendations will, de facto, be transposed by national courts when they rule on FRAND disputes. This may well be correct, but it is far from ideal. One of the great strengths of the current system is that courts in different jurisdictions compete to become the forum of choice for royalty disputes. In doing so, they constantly refine the way they rule on such disputes. Replacing this emergent equilibrium with a one-size-fits-all approach would be a great loss. 

Conversely, it’s plausible that national courts will continue to go about their daily business, largely ignoring the EUIPO royalty recommendations. If that were the case, one could legitimately ask what a lengthy and costly system of nonbinding royalty determinations really achieves. Whatever the case, the draft regulation offers little vision as to how its planned royalty determinations will improve actual outcomes.

A second important issue is that, in its current form, the proposal seems myopically focused on prices. This is a problem because licensing negotiations involve a much broader range of terms. Such considerations as available remedies and penalties, license-termination conditions, cross-licensing, and jurisdiction are often just as important as price. 

Not only are these issues conspicuously absent from the draft regulation, but properly accounting for them would largely undermine the regulation’s price-comparison mechanism, as this heterogeneity shows such comparisons are essentially apples to oranges.

Along similar lines, the draft regulation also includes a system of sampling to determine whether patents are truly essential to the underlying standard. These checks would be conducted by independent evaluators selected according to criteria to be determined by the Commission, and based on a methodology to be developed by the Commission, to ensure that the sample can produce statistically valid results. 

It’s unclear how much such a mechanism would enhance the status quo. Moreover, according to the proposal, the results of these essentiality checks would also not be legally binding. Rather than enhancing SEP-licensing negotiations and safeguarding the effectiveness of essentiality checks, this solution would just exacerbate holdout concerns. Indeed, implementers may use the process to delay negotiations or avoid payment of royalties while the process is ongoing.

Geopolitical Considerations

The Commission’s proposal also sends all the wrong signals internationally. In turn, this may undermine the geopolitical interests of both the EU and the United States.

By signaling its willingness to more closely interfere with the royalty rates agreed between inventors and implementers—even for patents registered outside the EU—the EU is effectively inviting other jurisdictions to do the same (or legitimizing ongoing efforts to do so). 

This is far from ideal. For instance, Chinese government officials and courts have increasingly sought to influence and rule on global FRAND disputes, generally in ways that favor its own firms, which are largely on the implementer side of disputes. The EU’s proposal sends a strong signal that it is fair game for government agencies to more directly influence global FRAND royalty rates, as well as seeking to override the decisions of foreign courts.

(The EU isn’t alone in this. Along similar lines, the proposed Standard Essential Royalty Act (SERA) would override foreign FRAND determinations when U.S. patents are involved.) 

In short, the EU’s draft regulation will embolden foreign jurisdictions to respond in kind and seek further authority over the royalty rates agreed upon by private parties. Ultimately, this will infuse the SEP-licensing space with politized oversight and vindicate China’s moves to depress the value of the West’s intellectual property, thus giving its state-backed rivals a leg up. At a time when geopolitical tensions between China and the West are historically high, such a move seems particularly ill-advised.

Conclusion

In sum, rather than strike a balance between patent owners’ and implementers’ interests, the EU proposal is one-sided. It only introduces burdens on SEP holders and disregards the significant risks of holdout strategies. Such a framework for SEP licensing would be at odds with the framework crafted by the CJEU in Huawei. 

Further, it would also undermine the value of many SEPs in ways that would be particularly appreciated by Chinese policymakers. The consequences of such an approach would be disruptive for entire SEP-reliant industries, and for the EU’s economic interests.

In Antitrust & Competition, China, European Union, Intellectual Property, Patent, Truth on the Market , , , , , , ,
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Exclusionary Pricing Without the Exclusion: Unpacking Qualcomm’s No License, No Chips Policy

Geoffrey Manne & Dirk Auer —  17 January 2020

Qualcomm is currently in the midst of a high-profile antitrust case against the FTC. At the heart of these proceedings lies Qualcomm’s so-called “No License, No Chips” (NLNC) policy, whereby it purportedly refuses to sell chips to OEMs that have not concluded a license agreement covering its underlying intellectual property. According to the FTC and Qualcomm’s opponents, this ultimately thwarts competition in the chipset market.

But Qualcomm’s critics fail to convincingly explain how NLNC averts competition — a failing that is particularly evident in the short hypothetical put forward in the amicus brief penned by Mark Lemley, Douglas Melamed, and Steven Salop. This blog post responds to their brief. 

The amici’s hypothetical

In order to highlight the most salient features of the case against Qualcomm, the brief’s authors offer the following stylized example:

A hypothetical example can illustrate how Qualcomm’s strategy increases the royalties it is able to charge OEMs. Suppose that the reasonable royalty Qualcomm could charge OEMs if it licensed the patents separately from its chipsets is $2, and that the monopoly price of Qualcomm’s chips is $18 for an all-in monopoly cost to OEMs of $20. Suppose that a new chipmaker entrant is able to manufacture chipsets of comparable quality at a cost of $11 each. In that case, the rival chipmaker entrant could sell its chips to OEMs for slightly more than $11. An OEM’s all-in cost of buying from the new entrant would be slightly above $13 (i.e., the Qualcomm reasonable license royalty of $2 plus the entrant chipmaker’s price of slightly more than $11). This entry into the chipset market would induce price competition for chips. Qualcomm would still be entitled to its patent royalties of $2, but it would no longer be able to charge the monopoly all-in price of $20. The competition would force Qualcomm to reduce its chipset prices from $18 down to something closer to $11 and its all-in price from $20 down to something closer to $13.

Qualcomm’s NLNC policy prevents this competition. To illustrate, suppose instead that Qualcomm implements the NLNC policy, raising its patent royalty to $10 and cutting the chip price to $10. The all-in cost to an OEM that buys Qualcomm chips will be maintained at the monopoly level of $20. But the OEM’s cost of using the rival entrant’s chipsets now will increase to a level above $21 (i.e., the slightly higher than $11 price for the entrant’s chipset plus the $10 royalty that the OEM pays to Qualcomm of $10). Because the cost of using the entrant’s chipsets will exceed Qualcomm’s all-in monopoly price, Qualcomm will face no competitive pressure to reduce its chipset or all-in prices.

A close inspection reveals that this hypothetical is deeply flawed. 

There appear to be five steps in the amici’s reasoning:

  1. Chips and IP are complementary goods that are bought in fixed proportions. So buyers have a single reserve price for both; 
  2. Because of its FRAND pledges, Qualcomm is unable to directly charge a monopoly price for its IP;
  3. But, according to the amici, Qualcomm can obtain these monopoly profits by keeping competitors out of the chipset market [this would give Qualcomm a chipset monopoly and, theoretically at least, enable it to charge the combined (IP + chips) monopoly price for its chips alone, thus effectively evading its FRAND pledges]; 
  4. To keep rivals out of the chipset market, Qualcomm undercuts them on chip prices and recoups its losses by charging supracompetitive royalty rates on its IP.
  5. This is allegedly made possible by the “No License, No Chips” policy, which forces firms to obtain a license from Qualcomm, even when they purchase chips from rivals.

While points 1 and 3 of the amici’s reasoning are uncontroversial, points 2 and 4 are mutually exclusive. This flaw ultimately undermines their entire argument, notably point 5. 

The contradiction between points 2 and 4 is evident. The amici argue (using hypothetical but representative numbers) that its FRAND pledges should prevent Qualcomm from charging more than $2 in royalties per chip (“the reasonable royalty Qualcomm could charge OEMs if it licensed the patents separately from its chipsets is $2”), and that Qualcomm deters entry in the chip market by charging $10 in royalties per chip sold (“raising its patent royalty to $10 and cutting the chip price to $10”).

But these statements cannot both be true. Qualcomm either can or it cannot charge more than $2 in royalties per chip. 

There is, however, one important exception (discussed below): parties can mutually agree to depart from FRAND pricing. But let us momentarily ignore this limitation, and discuss two baseline scenarios: One where Qualcomm can evade its FRAND pledges and one where it cannot. Comparing these two settings reveals that Qualcomm cannot magically increase its profits by shifting revenue from chips to IP.

For a start, if Qualcomm cannot raise the price of its IP beyond the hypothetical FRAND benchmark ($2, in the amici’s hypo), then it cannot use its standard essential technology to compensate for foregone revenue in the chipset market. Any supracompetitive profits that it earns must thus result from its competitive position in the chipset market.

Conversely, if it can raise its IP revenue above the $2 benchmark, then it does not require a strong chipset position to earn supracompetitive profits. 

It is worth unpacking this second point. If Qualcomm can indeed evade its FRAND pledges and charge royalties of $10 per chip, then it need not exclude chipset rivals to obtain supracompetitive profits. 

Take the amici’s hypothetical numbers and assume further that Qualcomm has the same cost as its chipsets rivals (i.e. $11), and that there are 100 potential buyers with a uniform reserve price of $20 (the reserve price assumed by the amici). 

As the amici point out, Qualcomm can earn the full monopoly profits by charging $10 for IP and $10 for chips. Qualcomm would thus pocket a total of $900 in profits ((10+10-11)*100). What the amici brief fails to acknowledge is that Qualcomm could also earn the exact same profits by staying out of the chipset market. Qualcomm could let its rivals charge $11 per chip (their cost), and demand $9 for its IP. It would thus earn the same $900 of profits (9*100). 

In this hypothetical, the only reason for Qualcomm to enter the chip market is if it is a more efficient chipset producer than its chipset rivals, or if it can out-compete them with better chipsets. For instance, if Qualcomm’s costs are only $10 per chip, Qualcomm could earn a total of $1000 in profits by driving out these rivals ((10+10-10)*100). Or, if it can produce better chips, though at higher cost and price (say, $12 per chip), it could earn the same $1000 in profits ((10+12-12)*100). Both of the situations would benefit purchasers, of course. Conversely, at a higher production cost of $12 per chip, but without any quality improvement, Qualcomm would earn only $800 in profits ((10+10-12)*100) and would thus do better to exit the chipset market.

Let us recap:

  • If Qualcomm can easily evade its FRAND pledges, then it need not enter the chipset market to earn supracompetitive profits; 
  • If it cannot evade these FRAND obligations, then it will be hard-pressed to leverage its IP bottleneck so as to dominate chipsets. 

The upshot is that Qualcomm would need to benefit from exceptional circumstances in order to improperly leverage its FRAND-encumbered IP and impose anticompetitive harm by excluding its rivals in the chipset market. 

The NLNC policy

According to the amici, that exceptional circumstance is the NLNC policy. In their own words:

The competitive harm is a result of the royalty being higher than it would be absent the NLNC policy.

This is best understood by adding an important caveat to our previous hypothetical: The $2 FRAND benchmark of the amici’s hypothetical is only a fallback option that can be obtained via litigation. Parties are thus free to agree upon a higher rate, for instance $10. This could, notably, be the case if Qualcomm offsetted the IP increase by reducing its chipset price, such that OEMs who purchase both chipsets and IP from Qualcomm were indifferent between contracts with either of the two royalty rates.

At first sight, this caveat may appear to significantly improve the FTC’s case against Qualcomm — it raises the specter of Qualcomm charging predatory prices on its chips and then recouping its losses on IP. But further examination suggests that this is an unlikely scenario.

Though firms may nominally be paying $10 for Qualcomm’s IP and $10 for its chips, there is no escaping the fact that buyers have an outside option in both the IP and chip segments (respectively, litigation to obtain FRAND rates, and buying chips from rivals). As a result, Qualcomm will be unable to charge a total price that is significantly above the price of rivals’ chips, plus the FRAND rate for its IP (and expected litigation costs).

This is where the amici’s hypothetical is most flawed. 

It is one thing to argue that Qualcomm can charge $10 per chipset and $10 per license to firms that purchase all of their chips and IP from it (or, as the amici point out, charge a single price of $20 for the bundle). It is another matter entirely to argue — as the amici do — that Qualcomm can charge $10 for its IP to firms that receive little or no offset in the chip market because they purchase few or no chips from Qualcomm, and who have the option of suing Qualcomm, thus obtaining a license at $2 per chip (if that is, indeed, the maximum FRAND rate). Firms would have to be foolish to ignore this possibility and to acquiesce to contracts at substantially higher rates. 

Indeed, two of the largest and most powerful OEMs — Apple and Samsung — have entered into such contracts with Qualcomm. Given their ability (and, indeed, willingness) to sue for FRAND violations and to produce their own chips or assist other manufacturers in doing so, it is difficult to conclude that they have assented to supracompetitive terms. (The fact that they would prefer even lower rates, and have supported this and other antitrust suits against Qualcomm doesn’t, change this conclusion; it just means they see antitrust as a tool to reduce their costs. And the fact that Apple settled its own FRAND and antitrust suit against Qualcomm (and paid Qualcomm $4.5 billion and entered into a global licensing agreement with it) after just one day of trial further supports this conclusion).

Double counting

The amici attempt to overcome this weakness by implicitly framing their argument in terms of exclusivity, strategic entry deterrence, and tying:

An OEM cannot respond to Qualcomm’s NLNC policy by purchasing chipsets only from a rival chipset manufacturer and obtaining a license at the reasonable royalty level (i.e., $2 in the example). As the district court found, OEMs needed to procure at least some 3G CDMA and 4G LTE chipsets from Qualcomm.

* * *

The surcharge burdens rivals, leads to anticompetitive effects in the chipset markets, deters entry, and impedes follow-on innovation. 

* * *

As an economic matter, Qualcomm’s NLNC policy is analogous to the use of a tying arrangement to maintain monopoly power in the market for the tying product (here, chipsets).

But none of these arguments totally overcomes the flaw in their reasoning. Indeed, as Aldous Huxley once pointed out, “several excuses are always less convincing than one”.

For a start, the amici argue that Qualcomm uses its strong chipset position to force buyers into accepting its supracompetitive IP rates, even in those instances where they purchase chipsets from rivals. 

In making this point, the amici fall prey to the “double counting fallacy” that Robert Bork famously warned about in The Antitrust Paradox: Monopolists cannot simultaneously charge a monopoly price AND purchase exclusivity (or other contractual restrictions) from their buyers/suppliers.

The amici fail to recognize the important sacrifices that Qualcomm would have to make in order for the above strategy to be viable. In simple terms, Qualcomm would have to offset every dollar it charges above the FRAND benchmark in the IP segment with an equivalent price reduction in the chipset segment.

This has important ramifications for the FTC’s case.

Qualcomm would have to charge lower — not higher — IP fees to OEMs who purchased a large share of their chips from third party chipmakers. Otherwise, there would be no carrot to offset its greater-than-FRAND license fees, and these OEMs would have significant incentives to sue (especially in a post-eBay world where the threat of injunctions is reduced if they happen to lose). 

And yet, this is the exact opposite of what the FTC alleged:

Qualcomm sometimes expressly charged higher royalties on phones that used rivals’ chips. And even when it did not, its provision of incentive funds to offset its license fees when OEMs bought its chips effectively resulted in a discriminatory surcharge. (emphasis added)

The infeasibility of alternative explanations

One theoretical workaround would be for Qualcomm to purchase exclusivity from its OEMs, in an attempt to foreclose chipset rivals. 

Once again, Bork’s double counting argument suggests that this would be particularly onerous. By accepting exclusivity-type requirements, OEMs would not only be reducing potential competition in the chipset market, they would also be contributing to an outcome where Qualcomm could evade its FRAND pledges in the IP segment of the market. This is particularly true for pivotal OEMs (such as Apple and Samsung), who may single-handedly affect the market’s long-term trajectory. 

The amici completely overlook this possibility, while the FTC argues that this may explain the rebates that Qulacomm gave to Apple. 

But even if the rebates Qualcomm gave Apple amounted to de facto exclusivity, there are still important objections. Authorities would notably need to prove that Qualcomm could recoup its initial losses (i.e. that the rebate maximized Qualcomm’s long-term profits). If this was not the case, then the rebates may simply be due to either efficiency considerations or Apple’s significant bargaining power (Apple is routinely cited as a potential source of patent holdout; see, e.g., here and here). 

Another alternative would be for Qualcomm to evict its chipset rivals through strategic entry deterrence or limit pricing (see here and here, respectively). But while the economic literature suggests that incumbents may indeed forgo short-term profits in order to deter rivals from entering the market, these theories generally rest on assumptions of imperfect information and/or strategic commitments. Neither of these factors was alleged in the case at hand.

In particular, there is no sense that Qualcomm’s purported decision to shift royalties from chips to IP somehow harms its short-term profits, or that it is merely a strategic device used to deter the entry of rivals. As the amici themselves seem to acknowledge, the pricing structure maximizes Qualcomm’s short term revenue (even ignoring potential efficiency considerations). 

Note that this is not just a matter of economic policy. The case law relating to unilateral conduct infringements — be it Brooke Group, Alcoa, or Aspen Skiing — almost systematically requires some form of profit sacrifice on the part of the monopolist. (For a legal analysis of this issue in the Qualcomm case, see ICLE’s Amicus brief, and yesterday’s blog post on the topic).

The amici are thus left with the argument that Qualcomm could structure its prices differently, so as to maximize the profits of its rivals. Why it would choose to do so, or should indeed be forced to, is a whole other matter.

Finally, the amici refer to the strategic tying literature (here), typically associated with the Microsoft case and the so-called “platform threat”. But this analogy is highly problematic. 

Unlike Microsoft and its Internet Explorer browser, Qualcomm’s IP is de facto — and necessarily — tied to the chips that practice its technology. This is not a bug, it is a feature of the patent system. Qualcomm is entitled to royalties, whether it manufactures chips itself or leaves that task to rival manufacturers. In other words, there is no counterfactual world where OEMs could obtain Qualcomm-based chips without entering into some form of license agreement (whether directly or indirectly) with Qualcomm. The fact that OEMs must acquire a license that covers Qualcomm’s IP — even when they purchase chips from rivals — is part and parcel of the IP system.

In any case, there is little reason to believe that Qualcomm’s decision to license its IP at the OEM level is somehow exclusionary. The gist of the strategic tying literature is that incumbents may use their market power in a primary market to thwart entry in the market for a complementary good (and ultimately prevent rivals from using their newfound position in the complementary market in order to overthrow the incumbent in the primary market; Carlton & Waldman, 2002). But this is not the case here.

Qualcomm does not appear to be using what little power it might have in the IP segment in order to dominate its rivals in the chip market. As has already been explained above, doing so would imply some profit sacrifice in the IP segment in order to encourage OEMs to accept its IP/chipset bundle, rather than rivals’ offerings. This is the exact opposite of what the FTC and amici allege in the case at hand. The facts thus cut against a conjecture of strategic tying.

Conclusion

So where does this leave the amici and their brief? 

Absent further evidence, their conclusion that Qualcomm injured competition is untenable. There is no evidence that Qualcomm’s pricing structure — enacted through the NLNC policy — significantly harmed competition to the detriment of consumers. 

When all is done and dusted, the amici’s brief ultimately amounts to an assertion that Qualcomm should be made to license its intellectual property at a rate that — in their estimation — is closer to the FRAND benchmark. That judgment is a matter of contract law, not antitrust.

In Antitrust & Competition, Apple, Federal Trade Commission, FTC v. Qualcomm: Analyzing the theory of the case, Google, Intellectual Property, Law & Economics, Patent, Platforms, Truth on the Market, Tying , , , , , ,
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Why the FTC had to Abandon the Duty to Deal Argument Against Qualcomm

Geoffrey Manne & Ben Sperry —  16 January 2020

On November 22, the FTC filed its answering brief in the FTC v. Qualcomm litigation. As we’ve noted before, it has always seemed a little odd that the current FTC is so vigorously pursuing this case, given some of the precedents it might set and the Commission majority’s apparent views on such issues. But this may also help explain why the FTC has now opted to eschew the district court’s decision and pursue a novel, but ultimately baseless, legal theory in its brief.

The FTC’s decision to abandon the district court’s reasoning constitutes an important admission: contrary to the district court’s finding, there is no legal basis to find an antitrust duty to deal in this case. As Qualcomm stated in its reply brief (p. 12), “the FTC disclaims huge portions of the decision.” In its effort to try to salvage its case, however, the FTC reveals just how bad its arguments have been from the start, and why the case should be tossed out on its ear.

What the FTC now argues

The FTC’s new theory is that SEP holders that fail to honor their FRAND licensing commitments should be held liable under “traditional Section 2 standards,” even though they do not have an antitrust duty to deal with rivals who are members of the same standard-setting organizations (SSOs) under the “heightened” standard laid out by the Supreme Court in Aspen and Trinko:  

To be clear, the FTC does not contend that any breach of a FRAND commitment is a Sherman Act violation. But Section 2 liability is appropriate when, as here, a monopolist SEP holder commits to license its rivals on FRAND terms, and then implements a blanket policy of refusing to license those rivals on any terms, with the effect of substantially contributing to the acquisition or maintenance of monopoly power in the relevant market…. 

The FTC does not argue that Qualcomm had a duty to deal with its rivals under the Aspen/Trinko standard. But that heightened standard does not apply here, because—unlike the defendants in Aspen, Trinko, and the other duty-to-deal precedents on which it relies—Qualcomm entered into a voluntary contractual commitment to deal with its rivals as part of the SSO process, which is itself a derogation from normal market competition. And although the district court applied a different approach, this Court “may affirm on any ground finding support in the record.” Cigna Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co. v. Polaris Pictures Corp., 159 F.3d 412, 418-19 (9th Cir. 1998) (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis added) (pp.69-70).

In other words, according to the FTC, because Qualcomm engaged in the SSO process—which is itself “a derogation from normal market competition”—its evasion of the constraints of that process (i.e., the obligation to deal with all comers on FRAND terms) is “anticompetitive under traditional Section 2 standards.”

The most significant problem with this new standard is not that it deviates from the basis upon which the district court found Qualcomm liable; it’s that it is entirely made up and has no basis in law.

Absent an antitrust duty to deal, patent law grants patentees the right to exclude rivals from using patented technology

Part of the bundle of rights connected with the property right in patents is the right to exclude, and along with it, the right of a patent holder to decide whether, and on what terms, to sell licenses to rivals. The law curbs that right only in select circumstances. Under antitrust law, such a duty to deal, in the words of the Supreme Court in Trinko, “is at or near the outer boundary of §2 liability.” The district court’s ruling, however, is based on the presumption of harm arising from a SEP holder’s refusal to license, rather than an actual finding of anticompetitive effect under §2. The duty to deal it finds imposes upon patent holders an antitrust obligation to license their patents to competitors. (While, of course, participation in an SSO may contractually obligate an SEP-holder to license its patents to competitors, that is an entirely different issue than whether it operates under a mandatory requirement to do so as a matter of public policy).  

The right of patentees to exclude is well-established, and injunctions enforcing that right are regularly issued by courts. Although the rate of permanent injunctions has decreased since the Supreme Court’s eBay decision, research has found that federal district courts still grant them over 70% of the time after a patent holder prevails on the merits. And for patent litigation involving competitors, the same research finds that injunctions are granted 85% of the time.  In principle, even SEP holders can receive injunctions when infringers do not act in good faith in FRAND negotiations. See Microsoft Corp. v. Motorola, Inc., 795 F.3d 1024, 1049 n.19 (9th Cir. 2015):

We agree with the Federal Circuit that a RAND commitment does not always preclude an injunctive action to enforce the SEP. For example, if an infringer refused to accept an offer on RAND terms, seeking injunctive relief could be consistent with the RAND agreement, even where the commitment limits recourse to litigation. See Apple Inc., 757 F.3d at 1331–32. 

Aside from the FTC, federal agencies largely agree with this approach to the protection of intellectual property. For instance, the Department of Justice, the US Patent and Trademark Office, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology recently released their 2019 Joint Policy Statement on Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments, which clarifies that:

All remedies available under national law, including injunctive relief and adequate damages, should be available for infringement of standards-essential patents subject to a F/RAND commitment, if the facts of a given case warrant them. Consistent with the prevailing law and depending on the facts and forum, the remedies that may apply in a given patent case include injunctive relief, reasonable royalties, lost profits, enhanced damages for willful infringement, and exclusion orders issued by the U.S. International Trade Commission. These remedies are equally available in patent litigation involving standards-essential patents. While the existence of F/RAND or similar commitments, and conduct of the parties, are relevant and may inform the determination of appropriate remedies, the general framework for deciding these issues remains the same as in other patent cases. (emphasis added).

By broadening the antitrust duty to deal well beyond the bounds set by the Supreme Court, the district court opinion (and the FTC’s preferred approach, as well) eviscerates the right to exclude inherent in patent rights. In the words of retired Federal Circuit Judge Paul Michel in an amicus brief in the case: 

finding antitrust liability premised on the exercise of valid patent rights will fundamentally abrogate the patent system and its critical means for promoting and protecting important innovation.

And as we’ve noted elsewhere, this approach would seriously threaten consumer welfare:

Of course Qualcomm conditions the purchase of its chips on the licensing of its intellectual property; how could it be any other way? The alternative would require Qualcomm to actually facilitate the violation of its property rights by forcing it to sell its chips to device makers even if they refuse its patent license terms. In that world, what device maker would ever agree to pay more than a pittance for a patent license? The likely outcome is that Qualcomm charges more for its chips to compensate (or simply stops making them). Great, the FTC says; then competitors can fill the gap and — voila: the market is more competitive, prices will actually fall, and consumers will reap the benefits.

Except it doesn’t work that way. As many economists, including both the current [now former] and a prominent former chief economist of the FTC, have demonstrated, forcing royalty rates lower in such situations is at least as likely to harm competition as to benefit it. There is no sound theoretical or empirical basis for concluding that using antitrust to move royalty rates closer to some theoretical ideal will actually increase consumer welfare. All it does for certain is undermine patent holders’ property rights, virtually ensuring there will be less innovation.

The FTC realizes the district court doesn’t have the evidence to support its duty to deal analysis

Antitrust law does not abrogate the right of a patent holder to exclude and to choose when and how to deal with rivals, unless there is a proper finding of a duty to deal. In order to find a duty to deal, there must be a harm to competition, not just a competitor, which, under the Supreme Court’s Aspen and Trinko cases can be inferred in the duty-to-deal context only where the challenged conduct leads to a “profit sacrifice.” But the record does not support such a finding. As we wrote in our amicus brief:

[T]he Supreme Court has identified only a single scenario from which it may plausibly be inferred that defendant’s refusal to deal with rivals harms consumers: The existence of a prior, profitable course of dealing, and the termination and replacement of that arrangement with an alternative that not only harms rivals, but also is less profitable for defendant. 

A monopolist’s willingness to forego (short-term) profits plausibly permits an inference that conduct is not procompetitive, because harm to a rival caused by an increase in efficiency should lead to higher—not lower—profits for defendant. And “[i]f a firm has been ‘attempting to exclude rivals on some basis other than efficiency,’ it’s fair to characterize its behavior as predatory.” Aspen Skiing, 472 U.S. at 605 (quoting Robert Bork, The Antitrust Paradox 138 (1978)).

In an effort to satisfy this standard, the district court states that “because Qualcomm previously licensed its rivals, but voluntarily stopped licensing rivals even though doing so was profitable, Qualcomm terminated a voluntary and profitable course of dealing.” Slip op. at 137. 

But it is not enough merely that the prior arrangement was profitable. Rather, Trinko and Aspen Skiing hold that when a monopolist ends a profitable relationship with a rival, anticompetitive exclusion may be inferred only when it also refuses to engage in an ongoing arrangement that, in the short run, is more profitable than no relationship at all. The key is the relative value to the monopolist of the current options on offer, not the value to the monopolist of the terminated arrangement. See Trinko, 540 U.S. at 409 (“a willingness to forsake short-term profits”); Aspen Skiing, 472 U.S. at 610–11 (“it was willing to sacrifice short-run benefits”)…

The record here uniformly indicates Qualcomm expected to maximize its royalties by dealing with OEMs rather than rival chip makers; it neither anticipated nor endured short-term loss. As the district court itself concluded, Qualcomm’s licensing practices avoided patent exhaustion and earned it “humongously more lucrative” royalties. Slip op. at 1243–254. That Qualcomm anticipated greater profits from its conduct precludes an inference of anticompetitive harm.

Moreover, Qualcomm didn’t refuse to allow rivals to use its patents; it simply didn’t sell them explicit licenses to do so. As discussed in several places by the district court:

According to Andrew Hong (Legal Counsel at Samsung Intellectual Property Center), during license negotiations, Qualcomm made it clear to Samsung that “Qualcomm’s standard business practice was not to provide licenses to chip manufacturers.” Hong Depo. 161:16-19. Instead, Qualcomm had an “unwritten policy of not going after chip manufacturers.” Id. at 161:24-25… (p.123)

* * *

Alex Rogers (QTL President) testified at trial that as part of the 2018 Settlement Agreement between Samsung and Qualcomm, Qualcomm did not license Samsung, but instead promised only that Qualcomm would offer Samsung a FRAND license before suing Samsung: “Qualcomm gave Samsung an assurance that should Qualcomm ever seek to assert its cellular SEPs against that component business, against those components, we would first make Samsung an offer on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms.” Tr. at 1989:5-10. (p.124)

This is an important distinction. Qualcomm allows rivals to use its patented technology by not asserting its patent rights against them—which is to say: instead of licensing its technology for a fee, Qualcomm allows rivals to use its technology to develop their own chips royalty-free (and recoups its investment by licensing the technology to OEMs that choose to implement the technology in their devices). 

The irony of this analysis, of course, is that the district court effectively suggests that Qualcomm must charge rivals a positive, explicit price in exchange for a license in order to facilitate competition, while allowing rivals to use its patented technology for free (or at the “cost” of some small reduction in legal certainty, perhaps) is anticompetitive.

Nonetheless, the district court’s factual finding that Qualcomm’s licensing scheme was “humongously” profitable shows there was no profit sacrifice as required for a duty to deal finding. The general presumption that patent holders can exclude rivals is not subject to an antitrust duty to deal where there is no profit sacrifice by the patent holder. Here, however, Qualcomm did not sacrifice profits by adopting the challenged licensing scheme. 

It is perhaps unsurprising that the FTC chose not to support the district court’s duty-to-deal argument, even though its holding was in the FTC’s favor. But, while the FTC was correct not to countenance the district court’s flawed arguments, the FTC’s alternative argument in its reply brief is even worse.

The FTC’s novel theory of harm is unsupported and weak

As noted, the FTC’s alternative theory is that Qualcomm violated Section 2 simply by failing to live up to its contractual SSO obligations. For the FTC, because Qualcomm joined an SSO, it is no longer in a position to refuse to deal legally. Moreover, there is no need to engage in an Aspen/Trinko analysis in order to find liability. Instead, according to the FTC’s brief, liability arises because the evasion of an exogenous pricing constraint (such as an SSO’s FRAND obligation) constitutes an antitrust harm:

Of course, a breach of contract, “standing alone,” does not “give rise to antitrust liability.” City of Vernon v. S. Cal. Edison Co., 955 F.2d 1361, 1368 (9th Cir. 1992); cf. Br. 52 n.6. Instead, a monopolist’s conduct that breaches such a contractual commitment is anticompetitive only when it satisfies traditional Section 2 standards—that is, only when it “tends to impair the opportunities of rivals and either does not further competition on the merits or does so in an unnecessarily restrictive way.” Cascade Health, 515 F.3d at 894. The district court’s factual findings demonstrate that Qualcomm’s breach of its SSO commitments satisfies both elements of that traditional test. (emphasis added)

To begin, it must be noted that the operative language quoted by the FTC from Cascade Health is attributed in Cascade Health to Aspen Skiing. In other words, even Cascade Health recognizes that Aspen Skiing represents the Supreme Court’s interpretation of that language in the duty-to-deal context. And in that case—in contrast to the FTC’s argument in its brief—the Court required demonstration of such a standard to mean that a defendant “was not motivated by efficiency concerns and that it was willing to sacrifice short-run benefits and consumer goodwill in exchange for a perceived long-run impact on its… rival.” (Aspen Skiing at 610-11) (emphasis added).

The language quoted by the FTC cannot simultaneously justify an appeal to an entirely different legal standard separate from that laid out in Aspen Skiing. As such, rather than dispensing with the duty to deal requirements laid out in that case, Cascade Health actually reinforces them.

Second, to support its argument the FTC points to Broadcom v. Qualcomm, 501 F.3d 297 (3rd Cir. 2007) as an example of a court upholding an antitrust claim based on a defendant’s violation of FRAND terms. 

In Broadcom, relying on the FTC’s enforcement action against Rambus before it was overturned by the D.C. Circuit, the Third Circuit found that there was an actionable issue when Qualcomm deceived other members of an SSO by promising to

include its proprietary technology in the… standard by falsely agreeing to abide by the [FRAND policies], but then breached those agreements by licensing its technology on non-FRAND terms. The intentional acquisition of monopoly power through deception… violates antitrust law. (emphasis added)

Even assuming Broadcom were good law post-Rambus, the case is inapposite. In Broadcom the court found that Qualcomm could be held to violate antitrust law by deceiving the SSO (by falsely promising to abide by FRAND terms) in order to induce it to accept Qualcomm’s patent in the standard. The court’s concern was that, by falsely inducing the SSO to adopt its technology, Qualcomm deceptively acquired monopoly power and limited access to competing technology:

When a patented technology is incorporated in a standard, adoption of the standard eliminates alternatives to the patented technology…. Firms may become locked in to a standard requiring the use of a competitor’s patented technology. 

Key to the court’s finding was that the alleged deception induced the SSO to adopt the technology in its standard:

We hold that (1) in a consensus-oriented private standard-setting environment, (2) a patent holder’s intentionally false promise to license essential proprietary technology on FRAND terms, (3) coupled with an SDO’s reliance on that promise when including the technology in a standard, and (4) the patent holder’s subsequent breach of that promise, is actionable conduct. (emphasis added)

Here, the claim is different. There is no allegation that Qualcomm engaged in deceptive conduct that affected the incorporation of its technology into the relevant standard. Indeed, there is no allegation that Qualcomm’s alleged monopoly power arises from its challenged practices; only that it abused its lawful monopoly power to extract supracompetitive prices. Even if an SEP holder may be found liable for falsely promising not to evade a commitment to deal with rivals in order to acquire monopoly power from its inclusion in a technological standard under Broadcom, that does not mean that it can be held liable for evading a commitment to deal with rivals unrelated to its inclusion in a standard, nor that such a refusal to deal should be evaluated under any standard other than that laid out in Aspen Skiing.

Moreover, the FTC nowhere mentions the DC Circuit’s subsequent Rambus decision overturning the FTC and calling the holding in Broadcom into question, nor does it discuss the Supreme Court’s NYNEX decision in any depth. Yet these cases stand clearly for the opposite proposition: a court cannot infer competitive harm from a company’s evasion of a FRAND pricing constraint. As we wrote in our amicus brief: 

In Rambus Inc. v. FTC, 522 F.3d 456 (D.C. Cir. 2008), the D.C. Circuit, citing NYNEX, rejected the FTC’s contention that it may infer anticompetitive effect from defendant’s evasion of a constraint on its monopoly power in an analogous SEP-licensing case: “But again, as in NYNEX, an otherwise lawful monopolist’s end-run around price constraints, even when deceptive or fraudulent, does not alone present a harm to competition.” Id. at 466 (citation omitted). NYNEX and Rambus reinforce the Court’s repeated holding that an inference is permissible only where it points clearly to anticompetitive effect—and, bad as they may be, evading obligations under other laws or violating norms of “business morality” do not permit a court to undermine “[t]he freedom to switch suppliers [which] lies close to the heart of the competitive process that the antitrust laws seek to encourage. . . . Thus, this Court has refused to apply per se reasoning in cases involving that kind of activity.” NYNEX, 525 U.S. at 137 (citations omitted).

Essentially, the FTC’s brief alleges that Qualcomm’s conduct amounts to an evasion of the constraint imposed by FRAND terms—without which the SSO process itself is presumptively anticompetitive. Indeed, according to the FTC, it is only the FRAND obligation that saves the SSO agreement from being inherently anticompetitive. 

In fact, when a firm has made FRAND commitments to an SSO, requiring the firm to comply with its commitments mitigates the risk that the collaborative standard-setting process will harm competition. Product standards—implicit “agreement[s] not to manufacture, distribute, or purchase certain types of products”—“have a serious potential for anticompetitive harm.” Allied Tube, 486 U.S. at 500 (citation and footnote omitted). Accordingly, private SSOs “have traditionally been objects of antitrust scrutiny,” and the antitrust laws tolerate private standard-setting “only on the understanding that it will be conducted in a nonpartisan manner offering procompetitive benefits,” and in the presence of “meaningful safeguards” that prevent the standard-setting process from falling prey to “members with economic interests in stifling product competition.” Id. at 500- 01, 506-07; see Broadcom, 501 F.3d at 310, 314-15 (collecting cases). 

FRAND commitments are among the “meaningful safeguards” that SSOs have adopted to mitigate this serious risk to competition…. 

Courts have therefore recognized that conduct that breaches or otherwise “side-steps” these safeguards is appropriately subject to conventional Sherman Act scrutiny, not the heightened Aspen/Trinko standard… (p.83-84)

In defense of the proposition that courts apply “traditional antitrust standards to breaches of voluntary commitments made to mitigate antitrust concerns,” the FTC’s brief cites not only Broadcom, but also two other cases:

While this Court has long afforded firms latitude to “deal or refuse to deal with whomever [they] please[] without fear of violating the antitrust laws,” FountWip, Inc. v. Reddi-Wip, Inc., 568 F.2d 1296, 1300 (9th Cir. 1978) (citing Colgate, 250 U.S. at 307), it, too, has applied traditional antitrust standards to breaches of voluntary commitments made to mitigate antitrust concerns. In Mount Hood Stages, Inc. v. Greyhound Corp., 555 F.2d 687 (9th Cir. 1977), this Court upheld a judgment holding that Greyhound violated Section 2 by refusing to interchange bus traffic with a competing bus line after voluntarily committing to do so in order to secure antitrust approval from the Interstate Commerce Commission for proposed acquisitions. Id. at 69723; see also, e.g., Biovail Corp. Int’l v. Hoechst Aktiengesellschaft, 49 F. Supp. 2d 750, 759 (D.N.J. 1999) (breach of commitment to deal in violation of FTC merger consent decree exclusionary under Section 2). (p.85-86)

The cases the FTC cites to justify the proposition all deal with companies sidestepping obligations in order to falsely acquire monopoly power. The two cases cited above both involve companies making promises to government agencies to win merger approval and then failing to follow through. And, as noted, Broadcom deals with the acquisition of monopoly power by making false promises to an SSO to induce the choice of proprietary technology in a standard. While such conduct in the acquisition of monopoly power may be actionable under Broadcom (though this is highly dubious post-Rambus), none of these cases supports the FTC’s claim that an SEP holder violates antitrust law any time it evades an SSO obligation to license its technology to rivals. 

Conclusion

Put simply, the district court’s opinion in FTC v. Qualcomm runs headlong into the Supreme Court’s Aspen decision and founders there. This is why the FTC is trying to avoid analyzing the case under Aspen and subsequent duty-to-deal jurisprudence (including Trinko, the 9th Circuit’s MetroNet decision, and the 10th Circuit’s Novell decision): because it knows that if the appellate court applies those standards, the district court’s duty-to-deal analysis will fail. The FTC’s basis for applying a different standard is unsupportable, however. And even if its logic for applying a different standard were valid, the FTC’s proffered alternative theory is groundless in light of Rambus and NYNEX. The Ninth Circuit should vacate the district court’s finding of liability. 

In Antitrust & Competition, Apple, Federal Trade Commission, FTC v. Qualcomm: Analyzing the theory of the case, Intellectual Property, International, International Trade, Law & Economics, Patent, Platforms, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , ,
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A Well-Reasoned Antitrust Division Boost for the Legitimate Exploitation of Patent Rights

Alden Abbott —  15 November 2017

On November 10, at the University of Southern California Law School, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Makan Delrahim delivered an extremely important policy address on the antitrust treatment of standard setting organizations (SSOs).  Delrahim’s remarks outlined a dramatic shift in the Antitrust Division’s approach to controversies concerning the licensing of standard essential patents (SEPs, patents that “read on” SSO technical standards) that are often subject to “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” (FRAND) licensing obligations imposed by SSOs.  In particular, while Delrahim noted the theoretical concerns of possible “holdups” by SEP holders (when SEP holders threaten to delay licensing until their royalty demands are met), he cogently explained why the problem of “holdouts” by implementers of SEP technologies (when implementers threaten to under-invest in the implementation of a standard, or threaten not to take a license at all, until their royalty demands are met) is a far more serious antitrust concern.  More generally, Delrahim stressed the centrality of patents as property rights, and the need for enforcers not to interfere with the legitimate unilateral exploitation of those rights (whether through licensing, refusals to license, or the filing of injunctive actions).  Underlying Delrahim’s commentary is the understanding that innovation is vitally important to the American economy, and the concern that antitrust enforcers’ efforts in recent years have threatened to undermine innovation by inappropriately interfering in free market licensing negotiations between patentees and licensees.

Important “takeaways” from Delrahim’s speech (with key quotations) are set forth below.

  • Thumb on the scale in favor of implementers: “In particular, I worry that we as enforcers have strayed too far in the direction of accommodating the concerns of technology implementers who participate in standard setting bodies, and perhaps risk undermining incentives for IP creators, who are entitled to an appropriate reward for developing break-through technologies.”
  • Striking the right balance through market forces (as opposed to government-issued best practices): “The dueling interests of innovators and implementers always are in tension, and the tension is resolved through the free market, typically in the form of freely negotiated licensing agreements for royalties or reciprocal licenses.”
  • Holdup as theoretical concern with no evidence that it’s a systemic or widespread problem: He praises Professor Carl Shapiro for his theoretical model of holdup, but stresses that “many of the proposed [antitrust] ‘solutions’ to the hold-up problem are often anathema to the policies underlying the intellectual property system envisioned by our forefathers.”
  • Rejects prior position that antitrust is only concerned with the patent-holder side of the holdup equation, stating that he’s more concerned with holdout given the nature of investments: “Too often lost in the debate over the hold-up problem is recognition of a more serious risk:  the hold-out problem. . . . I view the collective hold-out problem as a more serious impediment to innovation.  Here is why: most importantly, the hold-up and hold-out problems are not symmetric.  What do I mean by that?  It is important to recognize that innovators make an investment before they know whether that investment will ever pay off.  If the implementers hold out, the innovator has no recourse, even if the innovation is successful.  In contrast, the implementer has some buffer against the risk of hold-up because at least some of its investments occur after royalty rates for new technology could have been determined.  Because this asymmetry exists, under-investment by the innovator should be of greater concern than under-investment by the implementer.”
  • What’s at stake: “Every incremental shift in bargaining leverage toward implementers of new technologies acting in concert can undermine incentives to innovate.  I therefore view policy proposals with a one-sided focus on the hold-up issue with great skepticism because they can pose a serious threat to the innovative process.”
  • Breach of FRAND as primarily a contract or fraud, not antitrust issue: “There is a growing trend supporting what I would view as a misuse of antitrust or competition law, purportedly motivated by the fear of so-called patent hold-up, to police private commitments that IP holders make in order to be considered for inclusion in a standard.  This trend is troublesome.  If a patent holder violates its commitments to an SSO, the first and best line of defense, I submit, is the SSO itself and its participants. . . . If a patent holder is alleged to have violated a commitment to a standard setting organization, that action may have some impact on competition.  But, I respectfully submit, that does not mean the heavy hand of antitrust necessarily is the appropriate remedy for the would-be licensee—or the enforcement agency.  There are perfectly adequate and more appropriate common law and statutory remedies available to the SSO or its members.”
  • Recommends that unilateral refusals to license should be per se lawful: “The enforcement of valid patent rights should not be a violation of antitrust law.  A patent holder cannot violate the antitrust laws by properly exercising the rights patents confer, such as seeking an injunction or refusing to license such a patent.  Set aside whether taking these actions might violate the common law.  Under the antitrust laws, I humbly submit that a unilateral refusal to license a valid patent should be per se legal.  Indeed, just this Monday, Chief Judge Diane Wood, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Antitrust Division, stated that “[e]ven monopolists are almost never required to assist their competitors.”
  • Intent to investigate buyers’ cartel behavior in SSOs: “The prospect of hold-out offers implementers a crucial bargaining chip.  Unlike the unilateral hold-up problem, implementers can impose this leverage before they make significant investments in new technology.  . . . The Antitrust Division will carefully scrutinize what appears to be cartel-like anticompetitive behavior among SSO participants, either on the innovator or implementer side.  The old notion that ‘openness’ alone is sufficient to guard against cartel-like behavior in SSOs may be outdated, given the evolution of SSOs beyond strictly objective technical endeavors. . . . I likewise urge SSOs to be proactive in evaluating their own rules, both at the inception of the organization, and routinely thereafter.  In fact, SSOs would be well advised to implement and maintain internal antitrust compliance programs and regularly assess whether their rules, or the application of those rules, are or may become anticompetitive.”
  • Basing royalties on the “smallest salable component” as a requirement by a concerted agreement of implementers is a possible antitrust violation: “If an SSO pegs its definition of “reasonable” royalties to a single Georgia-Pacific factor that heavily favors either implementers or innovators, then the process that led to such a rule deserves close antitrust scrutiny.  While the so-called ‘smallest salable component’ rule may be a useful tool among many in determining patent infringement damages for multi-component products, its use as a requirement by a concerted agreement of implementers as the exclusive determinant of patent royalties may very well warrant antitrust scrutiny.”
  • Right to Injunctive Relief and holdout incentives: “Patents are a form of property, and the right to exclude is one of the most fundamental bargaining rights a property owner possesses.  Rules that deprive a patent holder from exercising this right—whether imposed by an SSO or by a court—undermine the incentive to innovate and worsen the problem of hold-out.  After all, without the threat of an injunction, the implementer can proceed to infringe without a license, knowing that it is only on the hook only for reasonable royalties.”
  • Seeking or Enforcing Injunctive Relief Generally a Contract Not Antitrust Issue: “It is just as important to recognize that a violation by a patent holder of an SSO rule that restricts a patent-holder’s right to seek injunctive relief should be appropriately the subject of a contract or fraud action, and rarely if ever should be an antitrust violation.”
  • FRAND is Not a Compulsory Licensing Scheme: “We should not transform commitments to license on FRAND terms into a compulsory licensing scheme.  Indeed, we have had strong policies against compulsory licensing, which effectively devalues intellectual property rights, including in most of our trade agreements, such as the TRIPS agreement of the WTO.  If an SSO requires innovators to submit to such a scheme as a condition for inclusion in a standard, we should view the SSO’s rule and the process leading to it with suspicion, and certainly not condemn the use of such injunctive relief as an antitrust violation where a contract remedy is perfectly adequate.”
In Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust Division, Intellectual Property, Justice Department, Patent, Standard Setting, Truth on the Market , , , , ,
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A Comprehensive Overview (and Sound Analysis) of the Law and Economics of FRAND Litigation, Here and Abroad

Alden Abbott —  15 June 2017

Too much ink has been spilled in an attempt to gin up antitrust controversies regarding efforts by holders of “standard essential patents” (SEPs, patents covering technologies that are adopted as part of technical standards relied upon by manufacturers) to obtain reasonable returns to their property. Antitrust theories typically revolve around claims that SEP owners engage in monopolistic “hold-up” when they threaten injunctions or seek “excessive” royalties (or other “improperly onerous” terms) from potential licensees in patent licensing negotiations, in violation of pledges (sometimes imposed by standard-setting organizations) to license on “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” (FRAND) terms. As Professors Joshua Wright and Douglas Ginsburg, among others, have explained, contract law, tort law, and patent law are far better placed to handle “FRAND-related” SEP disputes than antitrust law. Adding antitrust to the litigation mix generates unnecessary costs and inefficiently devalues legitimate private property rights.

Concerns by antitrust mavens that other areas of law are insufficient to cope adequately with SEP-FRAND disputes are misplaced. A fascinating draft law review article by Koren Wrong-Ervin, Director of the Scalia Law School’s Global Antitrust Institute, and Anne Layne-Farrar, Vice President of Charles River Associates, does an admirable job of summarizing key decisions by U.S. and foreign courts involved in determining FRAND rates in SEP litigation, and in highlighting key economic concepts underlying these holdings. As explained in the article’s abstract:

In the last several years, courts around the world, including in China, the European Union, India, and the United States, have ruled on appropriate methodologies for calculating either a reasonable royalty rate or reasonable royalty damages on standard-essential patents (SEPs) upon which a patent holder has made an assurance to license on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms. Included in these decisions are determinations about patent holdup, licensee holdout, the seeking of injunctive relief, royalty stacking, the incremental value rule, reliance on comparable licenses, the appropriate revenue base for royalty calculations, and the use of worldwide portfolio licensing. This article provides an economic and comparative analysis of the case law to date, including the landmark 2013 FRAND-royalty determination issued by the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court (and affirmed by the Guangdong Province High People’s Court) in Huawei v. InterDigital; numerous U.S. district court decisions; recent seminal decisions from the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Ericsson v. D-Link and CISCO v. CSIRO; the six recent decisions involving Ericsson issued by the Delhi High Court; the European Court of Justice decision in Huawei v. ZTE; and numerous post- Huawei v. ZTE decisions by European Union member states. While this article focuses on court decisions, discussions of the various agency decisions from around the world are also included throughout.   

To whet the reader’s appetite, key economic policy and factual “takeaways” from the article, which are reflected implicitly in a variety of U.S. and foreign judicial holdings, are as follows:

  • Holdup of any form requires lock-in, i.e., standard-implementing companies with asset-specific investments locked in to the technologies defining the standard or SEP holders locked in to licensing in the context of a standard because of standard-specific research and development (R&D) leading to standard-specific patented technologies.
  • Lock-in is a necessary condition for holdup, but it is not sufficient. For holdup in any guise to actually occur, there also must be an exploitative action taken by the relevant party once lock-in has happened. As a result, the mere fact that a license agreement was signed after a patent was included in a standard is not enough to establish that the patent holder is practicing holdup—there must also be evidence that the SEP holder took advantage of the licensee’s lock-in, for example by charging supra-FRAND royalties that it could not otherwise have charged but for the lock-in.
  • Despite coming after a particular standard is published, the vast majority of SEP licenses are concluded in arm’s length, bilateral negotiations with no allegations of holdup or opportunistic behavior. This follows because market mechanisms impose a number of constraints that militate against acting on the opportunity for holdup.
  • In order to support holdup claims, an expert must establish that the terms and conditions in an SEP licensing agreement generate payments that exceed the value conveyed by the patented technology to the licensor that signed the agreement.
  • The threat of seeking injunctive relief, on its own, cannot lead to holdup unless that threat is both credible and actionable. Indeed, the in terrorem effect of filing for an injunction depends on the likelihood of its being granted. Empirical evidence shows a significant decline in the number of injunctions sought as well as in the actual rate of injunctions granted in the United States following the Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in eBay v. MercExchange LLC, which ended the prior nearly automatic granting of injunctions to patentees and instead required courts to apply a traditional four-part equitable test for granting injunctive relief.
  • The Federal Circuit has recognized that an SEP holder’s ability to seek injunctive relief is an important safeguard to help prevent potential licensee holdout, whereby an SEP infringer unilaterally refuses a FRAND royalty or unreasonably delays negotiations to the same effect.
  • Related to the previous point, seeking an injunction against a licensee who is delaying or not negotiating in good faith need not actually result in an injunction. The fact that a court finds a licensee is holding out and/or not engaging in good faith licensing discussions can be enough to spur a license agreement as opposed to a permanent injunction.
  • FRAND rates should reflect the value of the SEPs at issue, so it makes no economic sense to estimate an aggregate rate for a standard by assuming that all SEP holders would charge the same rate as the one being challenged in the current lawsuit.
  • Moreover, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held, allegations of “royalty stacking” – the allegedly “excessive” aggregate burden of high licensing fees stemming from multiple patents that cover a single product – should be backed by case-specific evidence.
  • Most importantly, when a judicial FRAND assessment is focused on the value that the SEP portfolio at issue has contributed to the standard and products embodying the standard, the resulting rates and terms will necessarily avoid both patent holdup and royalty stacking.

In sum, the Wong-Ervin and Layne-Farrar article highlights economic insights that are reflected in the sounder judicial opinions dealing with the determination of FRAND royalties.  The article points the way toward methodologies that provide SEP holders sufficient returns on their intellectual property to reward innovation and maintain incentives to invest in technologies that enhance the value of standards.  Read it and learn.

In Antitrust & Competition, China, Economic Theory, European Union, Intellectual Property, International, Patent, Truth on the Market ,
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New Paper on SSOs, SEP and Antitrust by Joanna Tsai & Joshua Wright

Adam Mossoff —  18 August 2014

An important new paper was recently posted to SSRN by Commissioner Joshua Wright and Joanna Tsai.  It addresses a very hot topic in the innovation industries: the role of patented innovation in standard setting organizations (SSO), what are known as standard essential patents (SEP), and whether the nature of the contractual commitment that adheres to a SEP — specifically, a licensing commitment known by another acronym, FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory) — represents a breakdown in private ordering in the efficient commercialization of new technology.  This is an important contribution to the growing literature on patented innovation and SSOs, if only due to the heightened interest in these issues by the FTC and the Antitrust Division at the DOJ.

http://ssrn.com/abstract=2467939.

“Standard Setting, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Role of Antitrust in Regulating Incomplete Contracts”

JOANNA TSAI, Government of the United States of America – Federal Trade Commission
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JOSHUA D. WRIGHT, Federal Trade Commission, George Mason University School of Law
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A large and growing number of regulators and academics, while recognizing the benefits of standardization, view skeptically the role standard setting organizations (SSOs) play in facilitating standardization and commercialization of intellectual property rights (IPRs). Competition agencies and commentators suggest specific changes to current SSO IPR policies to reduce incompleteness and favor an expanded role for antitrust law in deterring patent holdup. These criticisms and policy proposals are based upon the premise that the incompleteness of SSO contracts is inefficient and the result of market failure rather than an efficient outcome reflecting the costs and benefits of adding greater specificity to SSO contracts and emerging from a competitive contracting environment. We explore conceptually and empirically that presumption. We also document and analyze changes to eleven SSO IPR policies over time. We find that SSOs and their IPR policies appear to be responsive to changes in perceived patent holdup risks and other factors. We find the SSOs’ responses to these changes are varied across SSOs, and that contractual incompleteness and ambiguity for certain terms persist both across SSOs and over time, despite many revisions and improvements to IPR policies. We interpret this evidence as consistent with a competitive contracting process. We conclude by exploring the implications of these findings for identifying the appropriate role of antitrust law in governing ex post opportunism in the SSO setting.

In Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust Division, Federal Trade Commission, Intellectual Property, Justice Department, Patent, Regulation, Standard Setting , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Why the ITC is actually a good place to adjudicate standard-essential patents

Geoffrey Manne —  23 July 2013

Over at Law360 I have a piece on patent enforcement at the ITC (gated), focusing on the ITC’s two Apple-Samsung cases: one in which the the ITC issued a final determination in which it found Apple to have infringed one of Samsung’s 3G-related SEPs, and the other (awaiting a final determination from the Commission) in which an ALJ found Samsung infringed four of Apple’s patents, including a design patent. Here’s a taste:

In fact, there is a strong argument in favor of ITC adjudication of FRAND-encumbered patents. As the name suggests, FRAND-encumbered patents must be licensed by their owners on reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms. Despite Apple’s claims that Samsung refused to negotiate, this seems unlikely (and the ITC found otherwise, of course). What’s more, post-adjudication, the FRAND requirement associated with a FRAND-encumbered patent remains.

As a result, negotiation over license terms for FRAND-encumbered patents can only be more likely than for other patents on which there is no duty to negotiate. Agreement over terms is similarly more likely as FRAND narrows the bargaining range for patent holders. What that means is that (1) avoiding a possible ITC exclusion order ex ante is a simple matter of entering into negotiations and licensing, an outcome that is required by FRAND, and (2) ex post (that is, after an exclusion order is issued), reinstating the ability to import and sell otherwise-infringing devices is also more readily accomplished, likewise through obligatory negotiation and licensing.

* * *

The ITC’s threat of injunctive relief can impel negotiation and licensing in all contexts, of course. But the absence of monetary damages, coupled with the inherent uncertainties surrounding design patents, the broad scope of enforcement and the vagaries of CBP’s implementation of ITC orders, is significantly more troubling in the design patent context. Thus, contrary to many critics’ assertions, the White House’s recent proposal and pending bills in Congress, it is actually FRAND-encumbered SEPs that are most amenable to adjudication and enforcement by the ITC

As they say, read the whole thing.

Coincidentally, Verizon’s general counsel, Randal Milch, has an op-ed on the same topic in today’s Wall Street Journal. Notes Milch:

What we have warned is that patent litigation at the ITC—where the only remedy is to keep products from the American public—is too high-stakes a game for patent disputes. The fact that the ITC’s intellectual-property-dispute docket has nearly quadrupled over 15 years only raises the stakes further. Smartphone patent litigation accounts for a substantial share of that increase.

Here are three instances under which the president should veto an exclusion order:

  • When the patent holder isn’t practicing the technology itself. Courts have routinely found shutdown relief inappropriate for non-practicing entities. Patent trolls shouldn’t be permitted to exclude products from our shores.
  • When the patent holder has already agreed to license the patent on reasonable terms as part of standards setting. If the patent holder has previously agreed that a reasonable licensing fee is all it needs to be made whole, it shouldn’t get shutdown relief at the ITC.
  • When the infringing piece of the product isn’t that important to the overall product, and doesn’t drive consumer demand for the product at issue. There are more than 250,000 patents relevant to today’s smartphones. It makes no sense that exclusion could occur for infringement of the most minor patent.

Obviously, the second of these is implicated in the ITC’s SEP case. But, as I have noted before, this ignores (and exacerbates) the problem of reverse holdup—where potential licensees refuse to license on reasonable terms. As the ITC noted in the Apple-Samsung SEP case:

The ALJ found that the evidence did not support a conclusion that Samsung failed to offer Apple a license on FRAND terms.

***

Apple argues that Samsung was obligated to make an initial offer to Apple of a specific fair and reasonable royalty rate. The evidence on record does not support Apple’s position….Further, there is no legal authority for Apple’s argument. Indeed, the limited precedent on the issue appears to indicate that an initial offer need not be the terms of a final FRAND license because the SSO intends the final license to be accomplished through negotiation. See Microsoft Corp. v. Motorola, Inc. (because SSOs contemplated that RAND terms be determined through negotiation, “it logically does not follow that initial offers must be on RAND terms”) [citation omitted].

***

Apple’s position illustrates the potential problem of so-called reverse patent hold-up, a concern identified in many of the public comments received by the Commission.20 In reverse patent hold-up, an implementer utilizes declared-essential technology without compensation to the patent owner under the guise that the patent owner’s offers to license were not fair or reasonable. The patent owner is therefore forced to defend its rights through expensive litigation. In the meantime, the patent owner is deprived of the exclusionary remedy that should normally flow when a party refuses to pay for the use of a patented invention.

One other note, on the point about the increase in patent litigation: This needs to be understood in context. As this article notes:

Over the last 40 years the number of patent lawsuits filed in the US has stayed relatively constant as a percentage of patents issued.

And the accompanying charts paint the picture even more clearly. Perhaps the numbers at the ITC would look somewhat different, as it seems to have increased in importance as a locus of patent litigation activity. But the larger point about the purported excess of patent litigation remains. I hasten to add that this doesn’t mean that the system is perfect, in particular (as my Law360 piece notes) with respect to the issuance and enforcement of design patents. But that may be an argument for USPTO reform, design patent reform, and/or, as Scott Kieff (who, by the way, finally got a hearing last week on his nomination by President Obama to be a member of the ITC) has argued, targeted reforms of the presumption of validity and fee-shifting. But it’s not a strong argument against injunctive remedies (at the ITC or elsewhere) in SEP cases.

Patent Activity by Year (in Terms of Applications Filed, Patents Issued and Lawsuits Filed)

Patent Activity by Year (in Terms of Applications Filed, Patents Issued and Lawsuits Filed)

Patent Lawsuits Normalized Against Patents Issued and Applications Filed

Patent Lawsuits Normalized Against Patents Issued and Applications Filed

Patent Activity by Year (in Terms of Applications Filed, Patents Issued and Lawsuits Filed), 5-year Moving Averages

Patent Activity by Year (in Terms of Applications Filed, Patents Issued and Lawsuits Filed), 5-year Moving Averages

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