Archives For SEPs

European Commission’s Leaked SEP Regulation Would Increase Costs for Innovators, Hurt EU Competitiveness, and Fail to Reduce Litigation

Igor Nikolic —  7 April 2023

[The following is a guest post from Igor Nikolic, a research fellow at the European University Institute.]

The European Commission is working on a legislative proposal that would regulate the licensing framework for standard-essential patents (SEPs). A regulatory proposal leaked to the press has already been the subject of extensive commentary (see here, here, and here). The proposed regulation apparently will include a complete overhaul of the current SEP-licensing system and will insert a new layer of bureaucracy in this area.

This post seeks to explain how the EU’s current standardization and licensing system works and to provide some preliminary thoughts on the proposed regulation’s potential impacts. 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. An open public discussion about the regulation’s contents might provide more time to think about the goals the EU wants to achieve on the global technology stage.

How the Current System Works

Modern technological standards are crucial for today’s digital economy. 5G and Wi-Fi standards, for example, enable connectivity between devices in various industries. 5G alone is projected to add up to €1 trillion to the European GDP and create up to 20 million jobs across all sectors of the economy between 2021 and 2025. These technical standards are typically developed collaboratively through standards-development organizations (SDOs) and include patented technology, called standard-essential patents (SEPs).

Companies working on the development of standards before SDOs are required to disclose patents they believe to be essential to a standard, and to commit to license such patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. For various reasons that are inherent to the system, there are far more disclosed patents that are potentially essential than there are patents that end up truly being essential for a standard. For example, one study calculated that there were 39,000 and 45,000 patents declared essential 3G UMTS and 4G LTE, respectively, while another estimated as many as 95,000 patent declarations for 5G. Commercial studies and litigated cases, however, provide a different picture. Only about 10% to 40%, respectively, of the disclosed patents were held to be truly essential for a standard.

The discrepancy between the tens of thousands of disclosed patents and the much lower number of truly essential patents is said to create an untransparent SEP-licensing landscape. The principal reason for such mismatch, however, is that SDO databases of disclosed patents were never intended to provide an accurate picture of truly essential patents to be used in licensing negotiations. For standardization, the much greater danger lies in the possibility of some patents remaining undeclared, thereby avoiding a FRAND commitment and jeopardizing successful market implementation. From that perspective, the broadest possible patent declarations are encouraged in order to guarantee that the standard will remain accessible to implementers on FRAND terms.

SEP licensing occurs both in bilateral negotiations and via patent pools. In bilateral negotiations, parties try to resolve various technical and commercial issues. Technical questions include:

  1. Whether and how many patents in a portfolio are truly essential;
  2. Whether such patents are infringed by standard-implementing products; and
  3. How many of these patents are valid.

Parties also need to agree on the commercial terms of a license, such as the level of royalties, the royalty-calculation methods, the availability of discounts, the amount of royalties for past sales, any cross-licensing provisions, etc.

SEP owners may also join their patents in a pool and license them in a single portfolio. Patent pools are known to significantly reduce transaction costs to all parties and provide a one-stop shop for implementers. Most licensing agreements are concluded amicably but, in cases where parties cannot agree, litigation may become necessary. The Huawei v ZTE case provided a framework for good-faith negotiation, and courts of the EU member states have become accustomed to evaluating the conduct of both parties.

What the Proposed Regulation Would Change

According to the Commission, SEP licensing is plagued with inefficiencies, apparently stemming from insufficient transparency and predictability regarding SEPs, uncertainty about FRAND terms and conditions, high enforcement costs, and inefficient enforcement.

As a solution, the leaked regulation would entrust the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)—currently responsible for EU trademarks—with establishing a register of standards and SEPs, conducting essentiality checks that would assess whether disclosed patents are truly essential for a standard, providing the process to set up an aggregate royalty for a standard, and making individual FRAND-royalty determinations. The intention, it seems, is to replace market-based negotiations and institutions with centralized government oversight and price regulation.

How Many Standards and SEPs Are in the Regulation’s Scope?

From a legal standpoint, the first question raised by the regulation is, to what standards does it apply? The Commission, in its various studies, has often singled out 3G, 4G, and 5G cellular standards. This is probably because they have been in the headlines, due to international litigation and multi-million-euro FRAND determinations.

The regulation, however, would apparently apply to all SDOs that request SEP owners to license on FRAND terms and to any SEPs in force in any EU member state. This is a very broad definition that could potentially capture thousands of different standards across all sectors of the economy. Moreover, it isn’t limited just to European SDOs. All international SDOs that include at least one patent in an EU member state would also be ensnared by this rule.

To give a sense of the magnitude of the task, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), a large European SDO, boasts that it annually publishes between 2,000 and 2,500 standards, while the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an SDO based in the United States, claims to have more than 2,000 standards. Earlier studies found that there were at least 251 interoperability standards in a laptop, while an average smartphone is estimated to contain a minimum of 30 interoperability standards. In the laptop, 75% of standards were licensed under FRAND terms.

In short, we may be talking about thousands of standards to be reported and checked by the EUIPO. Not only is this duplicative work (SDOs already have their own databases), but it would entail significant costs to SEP owners.

Aggregate Royalties May Not Add Anything New

The proposed regulation would allow contributors to a standard (which aren’t limited to SEP owners; they could be any entity that submits technical contributions to an SDO, which may not be patented) to agree on the aggregate royalty for the standard. The idea behind aggregate royalty rates is to have transparency on the standard’s total price, so that implementers may account for royalties in the cost of their products. Furthermore, aggregate royalties may, theoretically, reduce the costs and facilitate SEP licensing, as the total royalty burden would be known in advance.

Beyond competition-law concerns (there are no mentions in the leaked regulation of any safeguards against exchanges of commercially sensitive information), it is not clear what practical effects the aggregate royalty-rate announcements would bring. Is it just a wishful theoretical maximum? To be on the safe side, contributors may just announce their maximum preference, knowing that—in the actual negotiations—prices would be lowered by caps and discounts. This is nothing new. We have already had individual SEP owners who publicly announced their royalty programs in advance for 4G and 5G. And patent pools bring price transparency to video-codec standards.

What’s more, agreement among all contributors is not required. Given that contributors have different business models (some may be vertically integrated, while others focus on technology development and licensing), it is difficult to imagine all of them coming to a consensus. The regulation would appear to allow different contributors to jointly notify their views on the aggregate royalty. This may add even more confusion to standard implementers. For example, some contributors could announce an aggregate rate of $10 per product, another 5% of the end-product price, while a third group would prefer a lower $1 per-product rate. In practice, the announcements of aggregate royalty rates may be meaningless.

Patent Essentiality Is Not the Same as Patent Infringement, Validity, or Value

The regulation also proposes to assess the essentiality of patents declared essential for a standard. It is hoped that this would improve transparency in the SEP landscape and help implementers assess with whom they need to license. For an implementer, however, it is important not only to know whether patents are essential for a standard, but also whether it infringes SEPs with its products and whether SEPs are valid.

A patent may be essential to a standard but not infringed by a concrete product. For example, a patent owner may have a 4G SEP that reads on base stations, but an implementer may manufacture and sell smartphones and thus does not infringe the relevant 4G SEP. Or a patent owner may hold SEPs that claim optional features of a standard, while an implementer may only use the standard’s mandatory features in its products. A study of U.S. SEP litigation found that SEPs were held to be infringed in only 30.7% of cases. In other words, in 69.3% of cases, an SEP was not considered to be infringed by accused products.

A patent may also be essential but invalid. Courts have the final say on whether granted patents fulfill patentability requirements. In the Unwired Planet v Huawei litigation in the UK, the court found two asserted patents valid, essential, and infringed, and two patents invalid.

Essentiality is, therefore, just one piece of the puzzle. Even if parties would accept the nonbinding essentiality determination (which is not guaranteed), they can still disagree over matters of infringement and validity. Essentiality checks are not a silver bullet that would eliminate all disputes.

Essentiality also should not be equated with the patent’s value. Not all patents are created equal. Some SEPs are related to breakthrough or core inventions, while others may be peripheral or optional. Economists have long found that the economic value of patents is highly skewed. Only a relatively small number of patents provide most of the value.

How Accurate and Reliable Is Sampling for Essentiality Assessments?

The leaked regulation provides that, every year, the EUIPO shall select a sample of claimed SEPs from each SEP owner, as well as from each specific standard, for essentiality checks. The Commission would adopt the precise methodology to ensure a fair and statistically valid selection that can produce sufficiently accurate results. Each SEP owner may also propose up to 100 claimed SEPs to be checked for essentiality for each specific standard.

The apparent goal of the samples is to reduce the costs of essentiality assessments. Analyzing essentiality is not a simple task. It takes time and money to produce accurate and reliable results. A thorough review of essentiality by patent pools was estimated to cost up to €10,000 and to last two to three days. Another study spent 40-50 working hours preparing claim charts that are used in essentiality assessments. If we consider that the EUIPO would potentially be directed to assess the essentiality of thousands of standards, it is easy to see how these costs could skyrocket and render the task impossible.

The use of samples is not without concerns. It inevitably introduces certain margins of error. Keith Mallinson has suggested that a sample size must be very large and include thousands of patents if any meaningful results are to be reached. It is therefore questionable why SEP owners would be limited to checking only 100 patents. Unless a widely accepted method to assess a large portfolio of declared patents were to be found, the results of these essentiality assessments would likely be imprecise and unreliable, and therefore fall far short of the goal of increased transparency.

The Dangers of a Top-Down Approach and Patent Counting for Royalty Determinations

Concealed in the regulation is the possibility that the EUIPO could use a top-down approach for royalty determinations, which provides that the SEP owner should receive a proportional share in the total aggregate royalty of a standard. It requires:

  1. Establishing a cumulative royalty for a standard; and then
  2. Calculating the share in the total royalty to an individual SEP owner.

Now we can see why the aggregate rate becomes important. The regulation would allow EUIPO to set up a panel of three conciliators to provide a nonbinding expert opinion on the aggregate royalty rate (in addition to, or regardless of, the rates already announced by contributors). Essentiality checks are also needed to filter out which patents are truly essential, and the number can be used to assess the individual share of SEP owners.

A detailed analysis of this top-down approach exceeds the scope of this post, but here are the key points:

  • The approach relies on patent counting, treating every patent as having the same value. We have seen that this is not the case, and that value is, instead, highly skewed. Moreover, essential patents may be invalid or not infringed by specific devices, which is not factored into the top-down calculations.
  • The top-down approach is not used in commercial-licensing negotiations, and courts have frequently rejected its application. Industry practice is to use comparable licensing agreements. The top-down approach was used in Unwired Planet v Huawei only as a cross-check for the rates derived from comparable agreements. TCL v Ericsson relied on this method, but was vacated on appeal. The most recent Interdigital v Lenovo judgment considered and rejected its use, finding “no value in Interdigital’s Top-Down cross-check in any of its guises.”
  • Fundamentally, the EUIPO’s top-down approach would be tantamount to direct government regulation of technology prices. So far, there are no studies suggesting that something is wrong with the level of royalties that might require government intervention. In fact, studies point to the opposite: prices are falling over time.

Conclusion

As discussed, the regulation provides an elaborate notification system of standards and declared SEPs, essentiality checks, and aggregate and individual royalty-rate determinations. Even with all these data points, however, it is not clear that it would help with licensing. Parties may not accept them and may still end up in court. 

Recent experience from the automotive sector demonstrates that knowing the essentiality and the price of SEPs did not translate into smoother licensing. Avanci is a platform that gathers almost all SEP owners for licensing 2G, 3G, and 4G SEPs to car manufacturers. It was intended to provide a one-stop-shop to licensees by offering a single price for the large portfolio of SEPs. All patents included in the Avanci platform were independently tested for essentiality. Avanci, however, was faced with the reluctance of implementers to take a licence. Only after litigating and prevailing did Avanci succeed in licensing the majority of the market. 

Paradoxically, the most innovative companies—the one that invest in the research and development of several different standardized solutions and rely on technology licensing as their business model—will bear the brunt of the regulation. It pays off, ironically, to be a user of standardized technology, rather than the innovator.

The introduction of such elaborate government regulation of SEP licensing also has important international ramifications. It is easy to imagine that other countries might not be so thrilled with European regulators setting the aggregate rate for international standards and individual rates for their companies’ portfolios. China, in particular, might see it as an example and set up its own centralized agencies for royalty determinations. What may happen if European, Chinese, or some other regulators come up with different aggregate and individual royalty rates? The whole international standardization system could crumble.

In short, the regulation imposes significant costs on SEP owners that innovate and contribute their technologies to international standardization. Faced with excessive costs and overregulation, companies may abandon open and collaborative international standardization, based on FRAND licensing, and instead work on proprietary solutions in smaller industry groups. This would allow them to escape the ambit of EU regulation. Whether this is a better alternative is up for debate.

In Antitrust & Competition, European Union, Intellectual Property, Patent, Truth on the Market , , ,
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The Internationalization of Due Process, Federal Antitrust Enforcement, and the Rule of Law

Alden Abbott —  25 February 2022

The acceptance and implementation of due-process standards confer a variety of welfare benefits on society. As Christopher Yoo, Thomas Fetzer, Shan Jiang, and Yong Huang explain, strong procedural due-process protections promote: (1) compliance with basic norms of impartiality; (2) greater accuracy of decisions; (3) stronger economic growth; (4) increased respect for government; (5) better compliance with the law; (6) better control of the bureaucracy; (7) restraints on the influence of special-interest groups; and (8) reduced corruption.  

Recognizing these benefits (and consistent with the long Anglo-American tradition of recognizing due-process rights that dates back to Magna Carta), the U.S. government (USG) has long been active in advancing the adoption of due-process principles by competition-law authorities around the world, working particularly through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Competition Network (ICN). More generally, due process may be seen as an aspect of the rule of law, which is as important in antitrust as in other legal areas.

The USG has supported OECD Competition Committee work on due-process safeguards which began in 2010, and which culminated in the OECD ministers’ October 2021 adoption of a “Recommendation on Transparency and Procedural Fairness in Competition Law Enforcement.” This recommendation calls for: (1) competition and predictability in competition-law enforcement; (2) independence, impartiality, and professionalism of competition authorities; (3) non-discrimination, proportionality, and consistency in the treatment of parties subject to scrutiny; (4) timeliness in handling cases; (5) meaningful engagement with parties (including parties’ right to respond and be heard); (6) protection of confidential and privileged information; (7) impartial judicial review of enforcement decisions; and (8) periodic review of policies, rules, procedures, and guidelines, to ensure that they are aligned with the preceding seven principles.

The USG has also worked through the International Competition Network (ICN) to generate support for the acceptance of due-process principles by ICN member competition agencies and their governments. In describing ICN due-process initiatives, James Rill and Jana Seidl have explained that “[t]he current challenge is to determine the extent to which the ICN, as a voluntary organization, can or should establish mechanisms to evaluate implementation of … [due process] norms by its members and even non-members.”

In 2019, the ICN announced creation of a Framework for Competition Agency Procedures (CAP), open to both ICN and non-ICN national and multinational (most prominently, the EU’s Directorate General for Competition) competition agencies. The CAP essentially embodied the principles of a June 2018 U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) framework proposal. A September 2021 CAP Report (footnotes omitted) issued at an ICN steering-group meeting noted that the CAP had 73 members, and summarized the history and goals of the CAP as follows:

The ICN CAP is a non-binding, opt-in framework. It makes use of the ICN infrastructure to maximize visibility and impact while minimizing the administrative burden for participants that operate in different legal regimes and enforcement systems with different resource constraints. The ICN CAP promotes agreement among competition agencies worldwide on fundamental procedural norms. The Multilateral Framework for Procedures project, launched by the US Department of Justice in 2018, was the starting point for what is now the ICN CAP.

The ICN CAP rests on two pillars: the first pillar is a catalogue of fundamental, consensus principles for fair and effective agency procedures that reflect the broad consensus within the global competition community. The principles address: non-discrimination, transparency, notice of investigations, timely resolution, confidentiality protections, conflicts of interest, opportunity to defend, representation, written decisions, and judicial review.

The second pillar of the ICN CAP consists of two processes: the “CAP Cooperation Process,” which facilitates a dialogue between participating agencies, and the “CAP Review Process,” which enhances transparency about the rules governing participants’ investigation and enforcement procedures.

The ICN CAP template is the practical implementation tool for the CAP. Participants each submit CAP templates, outlining how their agencies adhere to each of the CAP principles. The templates allow participants to share and explain important features of their systems, including links and other references to related materials such as legislation, rules, regulations, and guidelines. The CAP templates are a useful resource for agencies to consult when they would like to gain a quick overview of other agencies’ procedures, benchmark with peer agencies, and develop new processes and procedures.

Through the two pillars and the template, the CAP provides a framework for agencies to affirm the importance of the CAP principles, to confer with other jurisdictions, and to illustrate how their regulations and guidelines adhere to those principles.

In short, the overarching goal of the ICN CAP is to give agencies a “nudge” to implement due-process principles by encouraging consultation with peer CAP members and exposing to public view agencies’ actual due-process record. The extent to which agencies will prove willing to strengthen their commitment to due process because of the CAP, or even join the CAP, remains to be seen. (China’s competition agency, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), has not joined the ICN CAP.)

Antitrust, Due Process, and the Rule of Law at the DOJ and the FTC  

Now that the ICN CAP and OECD recommendation are in place, it is important that the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as long-time international promoters of due process, lead by example in adhering to all of those multinational instruments’ principles. A failure to do so would, in addition to having negative welfare consequences for affected parties (and U.S. economic welfare), undermine USG international due-process advocacy. Less effective advocacy efforts could, of course, impose additional costs on American businesses operating overseas, by subjecting them to more procedurally defective foreign antitrust prosecutions than otherwise.

With those considerations in mind, let us briefly examine the current status of due-process protections afforded by the FTC and DOJ. Although traditionally robust procedural safeguards remain strong overall, some worrisome developments during the first year of the Biden administration merit highlighting. Those developments implicate classic procedural issues and some broader rule of law concerns. (This commentary does not examine due-process and rule-of-law issues associated with U.S. antitrust enforcement at the state level, a topic that warrants scrutiny as well.)

The FTC

  • New FTC leadership has taken several actions that have unfortunate due-process and rule-of-law implications (many of them through highly partisan 3-2 commission votes featuring strong dissents).

Consider the HSR Act, a Congressional compromise that gave enforcers advance notice of deals and parties the benefit of repose. HSR review [at the FTC] now faces death by a thousand cuts. We have hit month nine of a “temporary” and “brief” suspension of early termination. Letters are sent to parties when their waiting periods expire, warning them to close at their own risk. Is the investigation ongoing? Is there a set amount of time the parties should wait? No one knows! The new prior approval policy will flip the burden of proof and capture many deals below statutory thresholds. And sprawling investigations covering non-competition concerns exceed our Clayton Act authority.

These policy changes impose a gratuitous tax on merger activity – anticompetitive and procompetitive alike. There are costs to interfering with the market for corporate control, especially as we attempt to rebound from the pandemic. If new leadership wants the HSR Act rewritten, they should persuade Congress to amend it rather than taking matters into their own hands.

Uncertainty and delay surrounding merger proposals and new merger-review processes that appear to flaunt tension with statutory commands are FTC “innovations” that are in obvious tension with due-process guarantees.

  • FTC rulemaking initiatives have due-process and rule-of-law problems. As Commissioner Wilson noted (footnotes omitted), “[t]he [FTC] majority changed our rules of practice to limit stakeholder input and consolidate rulemaking power in the chair’s office. In Commissioner [Noah] Phillips’ words, these changes facilitate more rules, but not better ones.” Lack of stakeholder input offends due process. Even more serious, however, is the fact that far-reaching FTC competition rules are being planned (see the December 2021 FTC Statement of Regulatory Priorities). FTC competition rulemaking is likely beyond its statutory authority and would fail a cost-benefit analysis (see here). Moreover, even if competition rules survived, they would offend the rule of law (see here) by “lead[ing] to disparate legal treatment of a firm’s business practices, depending upon whether the FTC or the U.S. Justice Department was the investigating agency.”
  • The FTC’s July 2021 withdrawal of its 2015 “Statement of Enforcement Principles Regarding ‘Unfair Methods of Competition’ [UMC] Under Section 5 of the FTC Act” likewise undercuts the rule of law (see here). The 2015 Statement had tended to increase predictability in enforcement by tying the FTC’s exercise of its UMC authority to well-understood antitrust rule-of-reason principles and the generally accepted consumer welfare standard. By withdrawing the statement (over the dissents of Commissioners Wilson and Phillips) without promulgating a new policy, the FTC majority reduced enforcement guidance and generated greater legal uncertainty. The notion that the FTC may apply the UMC concept in an unbounded fashion lacks legal principle and threatens to chill innovative and welfare-enhancing business conduct.
  • Finally, the FTC’s abrupt September 2021 withdrawal of its approval of jointly issued 2020 DOJ-FTC Vertical Merger Guidelines (again over a dissent by Commissioners Wilson and Phillips), offends the rule of law in three ways. As Commissioner Wilson explains, it engenders confusion as to FTC policies regarding vertical-merger analysis going forward; it appears to reflect flawed economic thinking regarding vertical integration (which may in turn lead to enforcement error); and it creates a potential tension between DOJ and FTC approaches to vertical acquisitions (the third concern may disappear if and when DOJ and FTC agree to new merger guidelines).  

The DOJ

As of now, the Biden administration DOJ has not taken as many actions that implicate rule-of-law and due-process concerns. Two recent initiatives with significant rule-of-law implications, however, deserve mention.

  • First, on Dec. 6, 2021, DOJ suddenly withdrew a 2019 policy statement on “Licensing Negotiations and Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments.” In so doing, DOJ simultaneously released a new draft policy statement on the same topic, and requested public comments. The timing of the withdrawal was peculiar, since the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)—who had joined with DOJ in the 2019 policy statement (which itself had replaced a 2013 policy statement)—did not yet have new Senate-confirmed leadership and were apparently not involved in the withdrawal. What’s more, DOJ originally requested that public comments be filed by the beginning of January, a ridiculously short amount of time for such a complex topic. (It later relented and established an early February deadline.) More serious than these procedural irregularities, however, are two new features of the Draft Policy Statement: (1) its delineation of a suggested private-negotiation framework for patent licensing; and (2) its assertion that standard essential patent (SEP) holders essentially forfeit the right to seek an injunction. These provisions, though not binding, may have a coercive effect on some private negotiators, and they problematically insert the government into matters that are appropriately the province of private businesses and the courts. Such an involvement by government enforcers in private negotiations, which treats one category of patents (SEPs) less favorably than others, raises rule-of-law questions.
  • Second, in January 2018, DOJ and the FTC jointly issued a “Request for Information on Merger Enforcement” [RIF] that contemplated the issuance of new merger guidelines (see my recent analysis, here). The RIF was chock full of numerous queries to prospective commentators that generally reflected a merger-skeptical tone. This suggests a predisposition to challenge mergers that, if embodied in guidelines language, could discourage some (or perhaps many) non-problematic consolidations from being proposed. New merger guidelines that impliedly were anti-merger would be a departure from previous guidelines, which stated in neutral fashion that they would consider both the anticompetitive risks and procompetitive benefits of mergers being reviewed. A second major concern is that the enforcement agencies might produce long and detailed guidelines containing all or most of the many theories of competitive harm found in the RIF. Overly complex guidelines would not produce any true guidance to private parties, inconsistent with the principle that individuals should be informed what the law is. Such guidelines also would give enforcers greater flexibility to selectively pick and choose theories best suited to block particular mergers. As such, the guidelines might be viewed by judges as justifications for arbitrary, rather than principled, enforcement, at odds with the rule of law.    

Conclusion

“No man is an island entire of itself.” In today’s world of multinational antitrust cooperation, the same holds true for competition agencies. Efforts to export due process in competition law, which have been a USG priority for many years, will inevitably falter if other jurisdictions perceive the FTC and DOJ as not practicing what they preach.

It is to be hoped that the FTC and DOJ will take into account this international dimension in assessing the merits of antitrust “reforms” now under consideration. New enforcement policies that sow delay and uncertainty undermine the rule of law and are inconsistent with due-process principles. The consumer welfare harm that may flow from such deficient policies may be substantial. The agency missteps identified above should be rectified and new polices that would weaken due-process protections and undermine the rule of law should be avoided.              

In Antitrust & Competition, China, European Union, Federal Trade Commission, Intellectual Property, International, Justice Department, Merger Guidelines, Mergers & Acquisitions, Patent, Truth on the Market , , , , , ,
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How Not to Promote US Innovation

Jonathan M. Barnett —  18 February 2022

President Joe Biden’s July 2021 executive order set forth a commitment to reinvigorate U.S. innovation and competitiveness. The administration’s efforts to pass the America COMPETES Act would appear to further demonstrate a serious intent to pursue these objectives.

Yet several actions taken by federal agencies threaten to undermine the intellectual-property rights and transactional structures that have driven the exceptional performance of U.S. firms in key areas of the global innovation economy. These regulatory missteps together represent a policy “lose-lose” that lacks any sound basis in innovation economics and threatens U.S. leadership in mission-critical technology sectors.

Life Sciences: USTR Campaigns Against Intellectual-Property Rights

In the pharmaceutical sector, the administration’s signature action has been an unprecedented campaign by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to block enforcement of patents and other intellectual-property rights held by companies that have broken records in the speed with which they developed and manufactured COVID-19 vaccines on a mass scale.

Patents were not an impediment in this process. To the contrary: they were necessary predicates to induce venture-capital investment in a small firm like BioNTech, which undertook drug development and then partnered with the much larger Pfizer to execute testing, production, and distribution. If success in vaccine development is rewarded with expropriation, this vital public-health sector is unlikely to attract investors in the future. 

Contrary to increasingly common assertions that the Bayh-Dole Act (which enables universities to seek patents arising from research funded by the federal government) “robs” taxpayers of intellectual property they funded, the development of Covid-19 vaccines by scientist-founded firms illustrates how the combination of patents and private capital is essential to convert academic research into life-saving medical solutions. The biotech ecosystem has long relied on patents to structure partnerships among universities, startups, and large firms. The costly path from lab to market relies on a secure property-rights infrastructure to ensure exclusivity, without which no investor would put capital at stake in what is already a high-risk, high-cost enterprise.  

This is not mere speculation. During the decades prior to the Bayh-Dole Act, the federal government placed strict limitations on the ability to patent or exclusively license innovations arising from federally funded research projects. The result: the market showed little interest in making the investment needed to convert those innovations into commercially viable products that might benefit consumers. This history casts great doubt on the wisdom of the USTR’s campaign to limit the ability of biopharmaceutical firms to maintain legal exclusivity over certain life sciences innovations.

Genomics: FTC Attempts to Block the Illumina/GRAIL Acquisition

In the genomics industry, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has devoted extensive resources to oppose the acquisition by Illumina—the market leader in next-generation DNA-sequencing equipment—of a medical-diagnostics startup, GRAIL (an Illumina spinoff), that has developed an early-stage cancer screening test.

It is hard to see the competitive threat. GRAIL is a pre-revenue company that operates in a novel market segment and its diagnostic test has not yet received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). To address concerns over barriers to potential competitors in this nascent market, Illumina has committed to 12-year supply contracts that would bar price increases or differential treatment for firms that develop oncology-detection tests requiring use of the Illumina platform.

One of Illumina’s few competitors in the global market is the BGI Group, a China-based company that, in 2013, acquired Complete Genomics, a U.S. target that Illumina pursued but relinquished due to anticipated resistance from the FTC in the merger-review process.  The transaction was then cleared by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

The FTC’s case against Illumina’s re-acquisition of GRAIL relies on theoretical predictions of consumer harm in a market that is not yet operational. Hypothetical market failure scenarios may suit an academic seminar but fall well below the probative threshold for antitrust intervention. 

Most critically, the Illumina enforcement action places at-risk a key element of well-functioning innovation ecosystems. Economies of scale and network effects lead technology markets to converge on a handful of leading platforms, which then often outsource research and development by funding and sometimes acquiring smaller firms that develop complementary technologies. This symbiotic relationship encourages entry and benefits consumers by bringing new products to market as efficiently as possible. 

If antitrust interventions based on regulatory fiat, rather than empirical analysis, disrupt settled expectations in the M&A market that innovations can be monetized through acquisition transactions by larger firms, venture capital may be unwilling to fund such startups in the first place. Independent development or an initial public offering are often not feasible exit options. It is likely that innovation will then retreat to the confines of large incumbents that can fund research internally but often execute it less effectively. 

Wireless Communications: DOJ Takes Aim at Standard-Essential Patents

Wireless communications stand at the heart of the global transition to a 5G-enabled “Internet of Things” that will transform business models and unlock efficiencies in myriad industries.  It is therefore of paramount importance that policy actions in this sector rest on a rigorous economic basis. Unfortunately, a recent policy shift proposed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division does not meet this standard.

In December 2021, the Antitrust Division released a draft policy statement that would largely bar owners of standard-essential patents from seeking injunctions against infringers, which are usually large device manufacturers. These patents cover wireless functionalities that enable transformative solutions in myriad industries, ranging from communications to transportation to health care. A handful of U.S. and European firms lead in wireless chip design and rely on patent licensing to disseminate technology to device manufacturers and to fund billions of dollars in research and development. The result is a technology ecosystem that has enjoyed continuous innovation, widespread user adoption, and declining quality-adjusted prices.

The inability to block infringers disrupts this equilibrium by signaling to potential licensees that wireless technologies developed by others can be used at-will, with the terms of use to be negotiated through costly and protracted litigation. A no-injunction rule would discourage innovation while encouraging delaying tactics favored by well-resourced device manufacturers (including some of the world’s largest companies by market capitalization) that occupy bottleneck pathways to lucrative retail markets in the United States, China, and elsewhere.

Rather than promoting competition or innovation, the proposed policy would simply transfer wealth from firms that develop new technologies at great cost and risk to firms that prefer to use those technologies at no cost at all. This does not benefit anyone other than device manufacturers that already capture the largest portion of economic value in the smartphone supply chain.

Conclusion

From international trade to antitrust to patent policy, the administration’s actions imply little appreciation for the property rights and contractual infrastructure that support real-world innovation markets. In particular, the administration’s policies endanger the intellectual-property rights and monetization pathways that support market incentives to invest in the development and commercialization of transformative technologies.

This creates an inviting vacuum for strategic rivals that are vigorously pursuing leadership positions in global technology markets. In industries that stand at the heart of the knowledge economy—life sciences, genomics, and wireless communications—the administration is on a counterproductive trajectory that overlooks the business realities of technology markets and threatens to push capital away from the entrepreneurs that drive a robust innovation ecosystem. It is time to reverse course.

In Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust Division, China, Federal Trade Commission, Intellectual Property, International, International Trade, Justice Department, Merger Guidelines, Mergers & Acquisitions, Patent, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Debating the FTC v Qualcomm Amicus Brief, a Summary

Geoffrey Manne & Dirk Auer —  22 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.

Against this backdrop, Mark Lemley, Douglas Melamed, and Steven Salop penned a high-profile amicus brief supporting the FTC’s stance. 

We responded to their brief in a Truth on the Market blog post, and this led to a series of blog exchanges between the amici and ourselves. 

This post summarizes these exchanges.

1. Amicus brief supporting the FTC’s stance, and ICLE brief in support of Qualcomm’s position

The starting point of this blog exchange was an Amicus brief written by Mark Lemley, Douglas Melamed, and Steven Salop (“the amici”) , and signed by 40 law and economics scholars. 

The amici made two key normative claims:

  • Qualcomm’s no license, no chips policy is unlawful under well-established antitrust principles: 
    “Qualcomm uses the NLNC policy to make it more expensive for OEMs to purchase competitors’ chipsets, and thereby disadvantages rivals and creates artificial barriers to entry and competition in the chipset markets.”
  • Qualcomm’s refusal to license chip-set rivals reinforces the no license, no chips policy and violates the antitrust laws:
    “Qualcomm’s refusal to license chipmakers is also unlawful, in part because it bolsters the NLNC policy.16 In addition, Qualcomm’s refusal to license chipmakers increases the costs of using rival chipsets, excludes rivals, and raises barriers to entry even if NLNC is not itself illegal.”

It is important to note that ICLE also filed an amicus brief in these proceedings. Contrary to the amici, ICLE’s scholars concluded that Qualcomm’s behavior did not raise any antitrust concerns and was ultimately a matter of contract law and .

2. ICLE response to the Lemley, Melamed and Salop Amicus brief.

We responded to the amici in a first blog post. 

The post argued that the amici failed to convincingly show that Qualcomm’s NLNC policy was exclusionary. We notably highlighted two important factors.

  • First, Qualcomm could not use its chipset position and NLNC policy to avert the threat of FRAND litigation, thus extracting supracompetitve royalties:
    “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).”
  • Second, Qualcomm’s behavior did not appear to fall within standard patterns of strategic behavior:
    “The amici attempt to overcome this weakness by implicitly framing their argument in terms of exclusivity, strategic entry deterrence, and tying […]. But none of these arguments totally overcomes the flaw in their reasoning.” 

3. Amici’s counterargument 

The amici wrote a thoughtful response to our post. Their piece rested on two main arguments:

  • The Amici underlined that their theory of anticompetitive harm did not imply any form of profit sacrifice on Qualcomm’s part (in the chip segment):
    “Manne and Auer seem to think that the concern with the no license/no chips policy is that it enables inflated patent royalties to subsidize a profit sacrifice in chip sales, as if the issue were predatory pricing in chips.  But there is no such sacrifice.”
  • The deleterious effects of Qualcomm’s behavior were merely a function of its NLNC policy and strong chipset position. In conjunction, these two factors deterred OEMs from pursuing FRAND litigation:
    “Qualcomm is able to charge more than $2 for the license only because it uses the power of its chip monopoly to coerce the OEMs to give up the option of negotiating in light of the otherwise applicable constraints on the royalties it can charge.”

4. ICLE rebuttal

We then responded to the amici with the following points:

  • We agreed that it would be a problem if Qualcomm could prevent OEMs from negotiating license agreements in the shadow of FRAND litigation:
    “The critical question is whether there is a realistic threat of litigation to constrain the royalties commanded by Qualcomm (we believe that Lemley et al. agree with us on this point).”
  • However, Qualcomm’s behavior did not preclude OEMs from pursuing this type of strategy:
    “We believe the following facts support our assertion:
    OEMs have pursued various litigation strategies in order to obtain lower rates on Qualcomm’s IP. […]
    For the most part, Qualcomm’s threats to cut off chip supplies were just that: threats. […]
    OEMs also wield powerful threats. […]
    Qualcomm’s chipsets might no longer be “must-buys” in the future.”

 5. Amici’s surrebuttal

The amici sent us a final response (reproduced here in full) :

In their original post, Manne and Auer argued that the antitrust argument against Qualcomm’s no license/no chips policy was based on bad economics and bad law.  They now seem to have abandoned that argument and claim instead – contrary to the extensive factual findings of the district court – that, while Qualcomm threatened to cut off chips, it was a paper tiger that OEMs could, and knew they could, ignore.  The implication is that the Ninth Circuit should affirm the district court on the no license/ no chips issue unless it sets aside the court’s fact findings.  That seems like agreement with the position of our amicus brief.

We will not in this post review the huge factual record.  We do note, however, that Manne and Auer cite in support of their factual argument only that 3 industry giants brought and then settled litigation against Qualcomm.  But all 3 brought antitrust litigation; their doing so hardly proves that contract litigation or what Manne and Auer call “holdout” were viable options for anyone, much less for smaller OEMs.  The fact that Qualcomm found it necessary to actually cut off only one OEM – and then it only took the OEM only 7 days to capitulate – certainly does not prove that Qualcomm’s threats lacked credibility.   Notably, Manne and Auer do not claim that any OEMs bought chips from competitors of Qualcomm (although Apple bought some chips from Intel for a short while). No license/no chips appears to have been a successful, coercive policy, not an easily ignored threat.                                                                                                                                              

6. Concluding remarks

First and foremost, we would like to thank the Amici for thoughtfully engaging with us. This is what the law & economics tradition is all about: moving the ball forward by taking part in vigorous, multidisciplinary, debates.

With that said, we do feel compelled to leave readers with two short remarks. 

First, contrary to what the amici claim, we believe that our position has remained the same throughout these debates. 

Second, and more importantly, we think that everyone agrees that the critical question is whether OEMs were prevented from negotiating licenses in the shadow of FRAND litigation. 

We leave it up to Truth on the Market readers to judge which side of this debate is correct.

In Antitrust & Competition, Apple, Barriers to Entry, Federal Trade Commission, FTC v. Qualcomm: Analyzing the theory of the case, Intellectual Property, Patent, Platforms, Standard Setting, Truth on the Market, Tying , , , , , , ,
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The Facts Show That No License/No Chips Was A Successful Policy, Not an Empty Threat – A Reply to Manne and Auer’s New Argument

Lemley, Melamed, and Salop —  22 January 2020

[This guest post is authored by Mark A. Lemley, Professor of Law and the Director of Program in Law, Science & Technology at Stanford Law School; A. Douglas Melamed, Professor of the Practice of Law at Stanford Law School and Former Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Intel from 2009 to 2014; and Steven Salop, Professor of Economics and Law at Georgetown Law School. It is part of an ongoing debate between the authors, on one side, and Geoffrey Manne and Dirk Auer, on the other, and has been integrated into our ongoing series on the FTC v. Qualcomm case, where all of the posts in this exchange are collected.]

In their original post, Manne and Auer argued that the antitrust argument against Qualcomm’s no license/no chips policy was based on bad economics and bad law. They now seem to have abandoned that argument and claim instead – contrary to the extensive factual findings of the district court – that, while Qualcomm threatened to cut off chips, it was a paper tiger that OEMs could, and knew they could, ignore. The implication is that the Ninth Circuit should affirm the district court on the no license/ no chips issue unless it sets aside the court’s fact findings. That seems like agreement with the position of our amicus brief.

We will not in this post review the huge factual record. We do note, however, that Manne and Auer cite in support of their factual argument only that 3 industry giants brought and then settled litigation against Qualcomm. But all 3 brought antitrust litigation; their doing so hardly proves that contract litigation or what Manne and Auer call “holdout” were viable options for anyone, much less for smaller OEMs. The fact that Qualcomm found it necessary to actually cut off only one OEM – and then it only took the OEM only 7 days to capitulate – certainly does not prove that Qualcomm’s threats lacked credibility. Notably, Manne and Auer do not claim that any OEMs bought chips from competitors of Qualcomm (although Apple bought some chips from Intel for a short while). No license/no chips appears to have been a successful, coercive policy, not an easily ignored threat.

In Antitrust & Competition, Apple, Federal Trade Commission, FTC v. Qualcomm: Analyzing the theory of the case, Patent, Platforms, Standard Setting, Truth on the Market , , , , , ,
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Is FRAND Litigation a Credible Threat?: A reply to Mark Lemley, Douglas Melamed and Steven Salop

Geoffrey Manne & Dirk Auer —  21 January 2020

Last week, we posted a piece on TOTM, criticizing the amicus brief written by Mark Lemley, Douglas Melamed and Steven Salop in the ongoing Qualcomm litigation. The authors prepared a thoughtful response to our piece, which we published today on TOTM. 

In this post, we highlight the points where we agree with the amici (or at least we think so), as well as those where we differ.

Negotiating in the shadow of FRAND litigation

Let us imagine a hypothetical world, where an OEM must source one chipset from Qualcomm (i.e. this segment of the market is non-contestable) and one chipset from either Qualcomm or its  rivals (i.e. this segment is contestable). For both of these chipsets, the OEM must also reach a license agreement with Qualcomm.

We use the same number as the amici: 

  • The OEM has a reserve price of $20 for each chip/license combination. 
  • Rivals can produce chips at a cost of $11. 
  • The hypothetical FRAND benchmark is $2 per chip. 

With these numbers in mind, the critical question is whether there is a realistic threat of litigation to constrain the royalties commanded by Qualcomm (we believe that Lemley et al. agree with us on this point). The following table shows the prices that a hypothetical OEM would be willing to pay in both of these scenarios:

Blue cells are segments where QC can increase its profits if the threat of litigation is removed.

When the threat of litigation is present, Qualcomm obtains a total of $20 for the combination of non-contestable chips and IP. Qualcomm can use its chipset position to evade FRAND and charges the combined monopoly price of $20. At a chipset cost of $11, it would thus make $9 worth of profits. However, it earns only $13 for contestable chips ($2 in profits). This is because competition brings the price of chips down to $11 and Qualcomm does not have a chipset advantage to earn more than the FRAND rate for its IP.

When the threat of litigation is taken off the table, all chipsets effectively become non-contestable. Qualcomm still earns $20 for its previously non-contestable chips. But it can now raise its IP rate above the FRAND benchmark in the previously contestable segment (for example, by charging $10 for the IP). This squeezes its chipset competitors.

If our understanding of the amici’s response is correct, they argue that the combination of Qualcomm’s strong chipset position and its “No License, No Chips” policy (“NLNC”) effectively nullifies the threat of litigation:

Qualcomm is able to charge more than $2 for the license only because it uses the power of its chip monopoly to coerce the OEMs to give up the option of negotiating in light of the otherwise applicable constraints on the royalties it can charge. 

According to the amici, the market thus moves from a state of imperfect competition (where OEMs would pay $33 for two chips and QC’s license) to a world of monopoly (where they pay the full $40).

We beg to differ. 

Our points of disagreement

From an economic standpoint, the critical question is the extent to which Qualcomm’s chipset position and its NLNC policy deter OEMs from obtaining closer-to-FRAND rates.

While the case record is mixed and contains some ambiguities, we think it strongly suggests that Qualcomm’s chipset position and its NLNC policy do not preclude OEMs from using litigation to obtain rates that are close to the FRAND benchmark. There is thus no reason to believe that it can exclude its chipset rivals.

We believe the following facts support our assertion:

  • OEMs have pursued various litigation strategies in order to obtain lower rates on Qualcomm’s IP. As we mentioned in our previous post, this was notably the case for Apple, Samsung and LG. All three companies ultimately reached settlements with Qualcomm (and these settlements were concluded in the shadow of litigation proceedings — indeed, in Apple’s case, on the second day of trial). If anything, this suggests that court proceedings are an integral part of negotiations between Qualcomm and its OEMs.
  • For the most part, Qualcomm’s threats to cut off chip supplies were just that: threats. In any negotiation, parties will try to convince their counterpart that they have a strong outside option. Qualcomm may have done so by posturing that it would not sell chips to OEMs before they concluded a license agreement. 

    However, it seems that only once did Qualcomm apparently follow through with its threats to withhold chips (against Sony). And even then, the supply cutoff lasted only seven days.

    And while many OEMs did take Qualcomm to court in order to obtain more favorable license terms, this never resulted in Qualcomm cutting off their chipset supplies. Other OEMs thus had no reason to believe that litigation would entail disruptions to their chipset supplies.
  • OEMs also wield powerful threats. These include patent holdout, litigation, vertical integration, and purchasing chips from Qualcomm’s rivals. And of course they have aggressively pursued the bringing of this and other litigation around the world by antitrust authorities — even quite possibly manipulating the record to bolster their cases. Here’s how one observer sums up Apple’s activity in this regard:

    “Although we really only managed to get a small glimpse of Qualcomm’s evidence demonstrating the extent of Apple’s coordinated strategy to manipulate the FRAND license rate, that glimpse was particularly enlightening. It demonstrated a decade-long coordinated effort within Apple to systematically engage in what can only fairly be described as manipulation (if not creation of evidence) and classic holdout.

    Qualcomm showed during opening arguments that, dating back to at least 2009, Apple had been laying the foundation for challenging its longstanding relationship with Qualcomm.” (Emphasis added)

    Moreover, the holdout and litigation paths have been strengthened by the eBay case, which significantly reduced the financial risks involved in pursuing a holdout and/or litigation strategy. Given all of this, it is far from obvious that it is Qualcomm who enjoys the stronger bargaining position here.
  • Qualcomm’s chipsets might no longer be “must-buys” in the future. Rivals have gained increasing traction over the past couple of years. And with 5G just around the corner, this momentum could conceivably accelerate. Whether or not one believes that this will ultimately be the case, the trend surely places additional constraints on Qualcomm’s conduct. Aggressive behavior today may spur disgruntled rivals to enter the chipset market or switch suppliers tomorrow.

To summarize, as we understand their response, the delta between supracompetitive and competitive prices is entirely a function of Qualcomm’s ability to charge supra-FRAND prices for its licenses. On this we agree. But, unlike Lemley et al., we do not agree that Qualcomm is in a position to evade its FRAND pledges by using its strong position in the chipset market and its NLNC policy.

Finally, it must be said again: To the extent that that is the problem — the charging of supra-FRAND prices for licenses — the issue is manifestly a contract issue, not an antitrust one. All of the complexity of the case would fall away, and the litigation would be straightforward. But the opponents of Qualcomm’s practices do not really want to ensure that Qualcomm lowers its royalties by this delta; if they did, they would be bringing/supporting FRAND litigation. What the amici and Qualcomm’s contracting partners appear to want is to use antitrust litigation to force Qualcomm to license its technology at even lower rates — to force Qualcomm into a different business model in order to reset the baseline from which FRAND prices are determined (i.e., at the chip level, rather than at the device level). That may be an intelligible business strategy from the perspective of Qualcomm’s competitors, but it certainly isn’t sensible antitrust policy.

In Antitrust & Competition, Apple, Federal Trade Commission, FTC v. Qualcomm: Analyzing the theory of the case, Google, Intellectual Property, Patent, Platforms, Standard Setting, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market, Wireless , , , , , , , , , ,
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Manne and Auer’s Defense of Qualcomm’s Licensing Policy Is Deeply Flawed

Lemley, Melamed, and Salop —  21 January 2020

[This guest post is authored by Mark A. Lemley, Professor of Law and the Director of Program in Law, Science & Technology at Stanford Law School; A. Douglas Melamed, Professor of the Practice of Law at Stanford Law School and Former Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Intel from 2009 to 2014; and Steven Salop, Professor of Economics and Law at Georgetown Law School. It is a response to the post, “Exclusionary Pricing Without the Exclusion: Unpacking Qualcomm’s No License, No Chips Policy,” by Geoffrey Manne and Dirk Auer, which is itself a response to Lemley, Melamed, and Salop’s amicus brief in FTC v. Qualcomm.]

Geoffrey Manne and Dirk Auer’s defense of Qualcomm’s no license/no chips policy is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how that policy harms competition.  The harm is straightforward in light of facts proven at trial. In a nutshell, OEMs must buy some chips from Qualcomm or else exit the handset business, even if they would also like to buy additional chips from other suppliers. OEMs must also buy a license to Qualcomm’s standard essential patents, whether they use Qualcomm’s chips or other chips implementing the same industry standards. There is a monopoly price for the package of Qualcomm’s chips plus patent license. Assume that the monopoly price is $20. Assume further that, if Qualcomm’s patents were licensed in a standalone transaction, as they would be if they were owned by a firm that did not also make chips, the market price for the patent license would be $2. In that event, the monopoly price for the chip would be $18, and a chip competitor could undersell Qualcomm if Qualcomm charged the monopoly price of $18 and the competitor could profitably sell chips for a lower price. If the competitor’s cost of producing and selling chips was $11, for example, it could easily undersell Qualcomm and force Qualcomm to lower its chip prices below $18, thereby reducing the price for the package to a level below $20.

However, the no license/no chips policy enables Qualcomm to allocate the package price of $20 any way it wishes. Because the OEMs must buy some chips from Qualcomm, Qualcomm is able to coerce the OEMs to accept any such allocation by threatening not to sell them chips if they do not agree to a license at the specified terms. The prices could thus be $18 and $2; or, for example, they could be $10 for the chips and $10 for the license. If Qualcomm sets the license price at $10 and a chip price of $10, it would continue to realize the monopoly package price of $20. But in that case, a competitor could profitably undersell Qualcomm only if its chip cost were less than 10. A competitor with a cost of $11 would then not be able to successfully enter the market, and Qualcomm would not need to lower its chip prices. That is how the no license/no chip policy blocks entry of chip competitors and maintains Qualcomm’s chip monopoly. 

Manne and Auer’s defense of the no license/no chips policy is deeply flawed. In the first place, Manne and Auer mischaracterize the problem as one in which “Qualcomm undercuts [chipset rivals] on chip prices and recoups its losses by charging supracompetitive royalty rates on its IP.” On the basis of this description of the issue, they argue that, if Qualcomm cannot charge more than $2 for the license, it cannot use license revenues to offset the chip price reduction. And if Qualcomm can charge more than $2 for the license, it does not need a chip monopoly in order to make supracompetitive licensing profits. This argument is wrong both factually and conceptually.  

As a factual matter, there are constraints on Qualcomm’s ability to charge more than $2 for the license if the license is sold by itself. If sold by itself, the license would be negotiated in the shadow of infringement litigation and the royalty would be constrained by the value of the technology claimed by the patent, the risk that the patent would be found to be invalid or not infringed, the “reasonable royalty” contemplated by the patent laws, and the contractual commitment to license on FRAND terms. But Qualcomm is able to circumvent those constraints by coercing OEMs to pay a higher price or else lose access to essential Qualcomm chips. In other words, Qualcomm’s ability to charge more than $2 for the license is not exogenous. Qualcomm is able to charge more than $2 for the license only because it uses the power of its chip monopoly to coerce the OEMs to give up the option of negotiating in light of the otherwise applicable constraints on the royalties it can charge. It is a simple story of bundling with simultaneous recoupment.  

As a conceptual matter, Manne and Auer seem to think that the concern with the no license/no chips policy is that it enables inflated patent royalties to subsidize a profit sacrifice in chip sales, as if the issue were predatory pricing in chips.  But there is no such sacrifice. Money is fungible, and Manne and Auer have it backwards. The problem is that the no license/no chips policy enables Qualcomm to make purely nominal changes by allocating some of its monopoly chip price to the license price. Qualcomm offsets that nominal license price increase when the OEM buys chips from it by lowering the chip price by that amount in order to maintain the package price at the monopoly price.  There is no profit sacrifice for Qualcomm because the lower chip price simply offsets the higher license price. Qualcomm offers no such offset when the OEM buys chips from other suppliers. To the contrary, by using its chip monopoly to increase the license price, it increases the cost to OEMs of using competitors’ chips and is thus able to perpetuate its chip monopoly and maintain its monopoly chip prices and profits. Absent this policy, OEMs would buy more chips from third parties; Qualcomm’s prices and profits would fall; and consumers would benefit.

At the end of the day, Manne and Auer rely on the old “single monopoly profit” or “double counting” idea that a monopolist cannot both charge a monopoly price and extract additional consideration as well. But, again, they have it backwards. Manne and Auer describe the issue as whether Qualcomm can leverage its patent position in the technology markets to increase its market power in chips. But that is not the issue. Qualcomm is not trying to increase profits by leveraging monopoly power from one market into a different market in order to gain additional monopoly profits in the second market. Instead, it is using its existing monopoly power in chips to maintain that monopoly power in the first place. Assuming Qualcomm has a chip monopoly, it is true that it earns the same revenue from OEMs regardless of how it allocates the all-in price of $20 to its chips versus its patents. But by allocating more of the all-in price to the patents (i.e., in our example, $10 instead of $2), Qualcomm is able to maintain its monopoly by preventing rival chipmakers from undercutting the $20 monopoly price of the package. That is how competition and consumers are harmed.

In Antitrust & Competition, Federal Trade Commission, FTC v. Qualcomm: Analyzing the theory of the case, Intellectual Property, Patent, Standard Setting, Truth on the Market , , , , , , ,
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In FTC v. Qualcomm, Judge Koh Gets Lost in the Weeds

Dirk Auer —  28 August 2019

[TOTM: The following is the eighth in a series of posts by TOTM guests and authors on the FTC v. Qualcomm case recently decided by Judge Lucy Koh in the Northern District of California. Other posts in this series are here. The blog post is based on a forthcoming paper regarding patent holdup, co-authored by Dirk Auer and Julian Morris.]

Samsung SGH-F480V – controller board – Qualcomm MSM6280

In his latest book, Tyler Cowen calls big business an “American anti-hero”. Cowen argues that the growing animosity towards successful technology firms is to a large extent unwarranted. After all, these companies have generated tremendous prosperity and jobs.

Though it is less known to the public than its Silicon Valley counterparts, Qualcomm perfectly fits the anti-hero mold. Despite being a key contributor to the communications standards that enabled the proliferation of smartphones around the globe – an estimated 5 Billion people currently own a device – Qualcomm has been on the receiving end of considerable regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic (including two in the EU; see here and here). 

In the US, Judge Lucy Koh recently ruled that a combination of anticompetitive practices had enabled Qualcomm to charge “unreasonably high royalty rates” for its CDMA and LTE cellular communications technology. Chief among these practices was Qualcomm’s so-called “no license, no chips” policy, whereby the firm refuses to sell baseband processors to implementers that have not taken out a license for its communications technology. Other grievances included Qualcomm’s purported refusal to license its patents to rival chipmakers, and allegations that it attempted to extract exclusivity obligations from large handset manufacturers, such as Apple. According to Judge Koh, these practices resulted in “unreasonably high” royalty rates that failed to comply with Qualcomm’s FRAND obligations.

Judge Koh’s ruling offers an unfortunate example of the numerous pitfalls that decisionmakers face when they second-guess the distributional outcomes achieved through market forces. This is particularly true in the complex standardization space.

The elephant in the room

The first striking feature of Judge Koh’s ruling is what it omits. Throughout the more than two-hundred-page long document, there is not a single reference to the concepts of holdup or holdout (crucial terms of art for a ruling that grapples with the prices charged by an SEP holder). 

At first sight, this might seem like a semantic quibble. But words are important. Patent holdup (along with the “unreasonable” royalties to which it arguably gives rise) is possible only when a number of cumulative conditions are met. Most importantly, the foundational literature on economic opportunism (here and here) shows that holdup (and holdout) mostly occur when parties have made asset-specific sunk investments. This focus on asset-specific investments is echoed by even the staunchest critics of the standardization status quo (here).

Though such investments may well have been present in the case at hand, there is no evidence that they played any part in the court’s decision. This is not without consequences. If parties did not make sunk relationship-specific investments, then the antitrust case against Qualcomm should have turned upon the alleged exclusion of competitors, not the level of Qualcomm’s royalties. The DOJ said this much in its statement of interest concerning Qualcomm’s motion for partial stay of injunction pending appeal. Conversely, if these investments existed, then patent holdout (whereby implementers refuse to license key pieces of intellectual property) was just as much of a risk as patent holdup (here and here). And yet the court completely overlooked this possibility.

The misguided push for component level pricing

The court also erred by objecting to Qualcomm’s practice of basing license fees on the value of handsets, rather than that of modem chips. In simplified terms, implementers paid Qualcomm a percentage of their devices’ resale price. The court found that this was against Federal Circuit law. Instead, it argued that royalties should be based on the value the smallest salable patent-practicing component (in this case, baseband chips). This conclusion is dubious both as a matter of law and of policy.

From a legal standpoint, the question of the appropriate royalty base seems far less clear-cut than Judge Koh’s ruling might suggest. For instance, Gregory Sidak observes that in TCL v. Ericsson Judge Selna used a device’s net selling price as a basis upon which to calculate FRAND royalties. Likewise, in CSIRO v. Cisco, the Court also declined to use the “smallest saleable practicing component” as a royalty base. And finally, as Jonathan Barnett observes, the Circuit Laser Dynamics case law cited  by Judge Koh relates to the calculation of damages in patent infringement suits. There is no legal reason to believe that its findings should hold any sway outside of that narrow context. It is one thing for courts to decide upon the methodology that they will use to calculate damages in infringement cases – even if it is a contested one. It is a whole other matter to shoehorn private parties into adopting this narrow methodology in their private dealings. 

More importantly, from a policy standpoint, there are important advantages to basing royalty rates on the price of an end-product, rather than that of an intermediate component. This type of pricing notably enables parties to better allocate the risk that is inherent in launching a new product. In simplified terms: implementers want to avoid paying large (fixed) license fees for failed devices; and patent holders want to share in the benefits of successful devices that rely on their inventions. The solution, as Alain Bousquet and his co-authors explain, is to agree on royalty payments that are contingent on success in the market:

Because the demand for a new product is uncertain and/or the potential cost reduction of a new technology is not perfectly known, both seller and buyer may be better off if the payment for the right to use an innovation includes a state-contingent royalty (rather than consisting of just a fixed fee). The inventor wants to benefit from a growing demand for a new product, and the licensee wishes to avoid high payments in case of disappointing sales.

While this explains why parties might opt for royalty-based payments over fixed fees, it does not entirely elucidate the practice of basing royalties on the price of an end device. One explanation is that a technology’s value will often stem from its combination with other goods or technologies. Basing royalties on the value of an end-device enables patent holders to more effectively capture the social benefits that flow from these complementarities.

Imagine the price of the smallest saleable component is identical across all industries, despite it being incorporated into highly heterogeneous devices. For instance, the same modem chip could be incorporated into smartphones (of various price ranges), tablets, vehicles, and other connected devices. The Bousquet line of reasoning (above) suggests that it is efficient for the patent holder to earn higher royalties (from the IP that underpins the modem chips) in those segments where market demand is strongest (i.e. where there are stronger complementarities between the modem chip and the end device).

One way to make royalties more contingent on market success is to use the price of the modem (which is presumably identical across all segments) as a royalty base and negotiate a separate royalty rate for each end device (charging a higher rate for devices that will presumably benefit from stronger consumer demand). But this has important drawbacks. For a start, identifying those segments (or devices) that are most likely to be successful is informationally cumbersome for the inventor. Moreover, this practice could land the patent holder in hot water. Antitrust authorities might naïvely conclude that these varying royalty rates violate the “non-discriminatory” part of FRAND.

A much simpler solution is to apply a single royalty rate (or at least attempt to do so) but use the price of the end device as a royalty base. This ensures that the patent holder’s rewards are not just contingent on the number of devices sold, but also on their value. Royalties will thus more closely track the end-device’s success in the marketplace.   

In short, basing royalties on the value of an end-device is an informationally light way for the inventor to capture some of the unforeseen value that might stem from the inclusion of its technology in an end device. Mandating that royalty rates be based on the value of the smallest saleable component ignores this complex reality.

Prices are almost impossible to reconstruct

Judge Koh was similarly imperceptive when assessing Qualcomm’s contribution to the value of key standards, such as LTE and CDMA. 

For a start, she reasoned that Qualcomm’s royalties were large compared to the number of patents it had contributed to these technologies:

Moreover, Qualcomm’s own documents also show that Qualcomm is not the top standards contributor, which confirms Qualcomm’s own statements that QCT’s monopoly chip market share rather than the value of QTL’s patents sustain QTL’s unreasonably high royalty rates.

Given the tremendous heterogeneity that usually exists between the different technologies that make up a standard, simply counting each firm’s contributions is a crude and misleading way to gauge the value of their patent portfolios. Accordingly, Qualcomm argued that it had made pioneering contributions to technologies such as CDMA, and 4G/5G. Though the value of Qualcomm’s technologies is ultimately an empirical question, the court’s crude patent counting  was unlikely to provide a satisfying answer.

Just as problematically, the court also concluded that Qualcomm’s royalties were unreasonably high because “modem chips do not drive handset value.” In its own words:

Qualcomm’s intellectual property is for communication, and Qualcomm does not own intellectual property on color TFT LCD panel, mega-pixel DSC module, user storage memory, decoration, and mechanical parts. The costs of these non-communication-related components have become more expensive and now contribute 60-70% of the phone value. The phone is not just for communication, but also for computing, movie-playing, video-taking, and data storage.

As Luke Froeb and his co-authors have also observed, the court’s reasoning on this point is particularly unfortunate. Though it is clearly true that superior LCD panels, cameras, and storage increase a handset’s value – regardless of the modem chip that is associated with them – it is equally obvious that improvements to these components are far more valuable to consumers when they are also associated with high-performance communications technology.

For example, though there is undoubtedly standalone value in being able to take improved pictures on a smartphone, this value is multiplied by the ability to instantly share these pictures with friends, and automatically back them up on the cloud. Likewise, improving a smartphone’s LCD panel is more valuable if the device is also equipped with a cutting edge modem (both are necessary for consumers to enjoy high-definition media online).

In more technical terms, the court fails to acknowledge that, in the presence of perfect complements, each good makes an incremental contribution of 100% to the value of the whole. A smartphone’s components would be far less valuable to consumers if they were not associated with a high-performance modem, and vice versa. The fallacy to which the court falls prey is perfectly encapsulated by a quote it cites from Apple’s COO:

Apple invests heavily in the handset’s physical design and enclosures to add value, and those physical handset features clearly have nothing to do with Qualcomm’s cellular patents, it is unfair for Qualcomm to receive royalty revenue on that added value.

The question the court should be asking, however, is whether Apple would have gone to the same lengths to improve its devices were it not for Qualcomm’s complementary communications technology. By ignoring this question, Judge Koh all but guaranteed that her assessment of Qualcomm’s royalty rates would be wide of the mark.

Concluding remarks

In short, the FTC v. Qualcomm case shows that courts will often struggle when they try to act as makeshift price regulators. It thus lends further credence to Gergory Werden and Luke Froeb’s conclusion that:

Nothing is more alien to antitrust than enquiring into the reasonableness of prices. 

This is especially true in complex industries, such as the standardization space. The colossal number of parameters that affect the price for a technology are almost impossible to reproduce in a top-down fashion, as the court attempted to do in the Qualcomm case. As a result, courts will routinely draw poor inferences from factors such as the royalty base agreed upon by parties, the number of patents contributed by a firm, and the complex manner in which an individual technology may contribute to the value of an end-product. Antitrust authorities and courts would thus do well to recall the wise words of Friedrich Hayek:

If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them. We cannot expect that this problem will be solved by first communicating all this knowledge to a central board which, after integrating all knowledge, issues its orders. We must solve it by some form of decentralization.

In Amazon, Apple, European Union, FTC v. Qualcomm: Analyzing the theory of the case, Intellectual Property, International, Justice Department, Patent, Platforms, Regulation, Standard Setting, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market, Wireless , , , , , , , , , , ,
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FTC v. Qualcomm: Innovation and Competition

Geoffrey Manne —  22 January 2019

[TOTM: The following is the first in a series of posts by TOTM guests and authors on the FTC v. Qualcomm case, currently awaiting decision by Judge Lucy Koh in the Northern District of California. The entire series of posts is available here. This post originally appeared on the Federalist Society Blog.]

Just days before leaving office, the outgoing Obama FTC left what should have been an unwelcome parting gift for the incoming Commission: an antitrust suit against Qualcomm. This week the FTC — under a new Chairman and with an entirely new set of Commissioners — finished unwrapping its present, and rested its case in the trial begun earlier this month in FTC v Qualcomm.

This complex case is about an overreaching federal agency seeking to set prices and dictate the business model of one of the world’s most innovative technology companies. As soon-to-be Acting FTC Chairwoman, Maureen Ohlhausen, noted in her dissent from the FTC’s decision to bring the case, it is “an enforcement action based on a flawed legal theory… that lacks economic and evidentiary support…, and that, by its mere issuance, will undermine U.S. intellectual property rights… worldwide.”

Implicit in the FTC’s case is the assumption that Qualcomm charges smartphone makers “too much” for its wireless communications patents — patents that are essential to many smartphones. But, as former FTC and DOJ chief economist, Luke Froeb, puts it, “[n]othing is more alien to antitrust than enquiring into the reasonableness of prices.” Even if Qualcomm’s royalty rates could somehow be deemed “too high” (according to whom?), excessive pricing on its own is not an antitrust violation under U.S. law.

Knowing this, the FTC “dances around that essential element” (in Ohlhausen’s words) and offers instead a convoluted argument that Qualcomm’s business model is anticompetitive. Qualcomm both sells wireless communications chipsets used in mobile phones, as well as licenses the technology on which those chips rely. According to the complaint, by licensing its patents only to end-users (mobile device makers) instead of to chip makers further up the supply chain, Qualcomm is able to threaten to withhold the supply of its chipsets to its licensees and thereby extract onerous terms in its patent license agreements.

There are numerous problems with the FTC’s case. Most fundamental among them is the “no duh” problem: 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 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.

In fact, given this inescapable reality, it is unclear why the current Commission is continuing to pursue the case at all. The bottom line is that, if it wins the case, the current FTC will have done more to undermine intellectual property rights than any other administration’s Commission has been able to accomplish.

It is not difficult to identify the frailties of the case that would readily support the agency backing away from pursuing it further. To begin with, the claim that device makers cannot refuse Qualcomm’s terms because the company effectively controls the market’s supply of mobile broadband modem chips is fanciful. While it’s true that Qualcomm is the largest supplier of these chipsets, it’s an absurdity to claim that device makers have no alternatives. In fact, Qualcomm has faced stiff competition from some of the world’s other most successful companies since well before the FTC brought its case. Samsung — the largest maker of Android phones — developed its own chip to replace Qualcomm’s in 2015, for example. More recently, Intel has provided Apple with all of the chips for its 2018 iPhones, and Apple is rumored to be developing its own 5G cellular chips in-house. In any case, the fact that most device makers have preferred to use Qualcomm’s chips in the past says nothing about the ability of other firms to take business from it.

The possibility (and actuality) of entry from competitors like Intel ensures that sophisticated purchasers like Apple have bargaining leverage. Yet, ironically, the FTC points to Apple’s claimthat Qualcomm “forced” it to use Intel modems in its latest iPhones as evidence of Qualcomm’s dominance. Think about that: Qualcomm “forced” a company worth many times its own value to use a competitor’s chips in its new iPhones — and that shows Qualcomm has a stranglehold on the market?

The FTC implies that Qualcomm’s refusal to license its patents to competing chip makers means that competitors cannot reliably supply the market. Yet Qualcomm has never asserted its patents against a competing chip maker, every one of which uses Qualcomm’s technology without paying any royalties to do so. The FTC nevertheless paints the decision to license only to device makers as the aberrant choice of an exploitative, dominant firm. The reality, however, is that device-level licensing is the norm practiced by every company in the industry — and has been since the 1980s.

Not only that, but Qualcomm has not altered its licensing terms or practices since it was decidedly an upstart challenger in the market — indeed, since before it even started producing chips, and thus before it even had the supposed means to leverage its chip sales to extract anticompetitive licensing terms. It would be a remarkable coincidence if precisely the same licensing structure and the exact same royalty rate served the company’s interests both as a struggling startup and as an alleged rapacious monopolist. Yet that is the implication of the FTC’s theory.

When Qualcomm introduced CDMA technology to the mobile phone industry in 1989, it was a promising but unproven new technology in an industry dominated by different standards. Qualcomm happily encouraged chip makers to promote the standard by enabling them to produce compliant components without paying any royalties; and it willingly licensed its patents to device makers based on a percentage of sales of the handsets that incorporated CDMA chips. Qualcomm thus shared both the financial benefits and the financial risk associated with the development and sales of devices implementing its new technology.

Qualcomm’s favorable (to handset makers) licensing terms may have helped CDMA become one of the industry standards for 2G and 3G devices. But it’s an unsupportable assertion to say that those identical terms are suddenly the source of anticompetitive power, particularly as 2G and 3G are rapidly disappearing from the market and as competing patent holders gain prominence with each successive cellular technology standard.

To be sure, successful handset makers like Apple that sell their devices at a significant premium would prefer to share less of their revenue with Qualcomm. But their success was built in large part on Qualcomm’s technology. They may regret the terms of the deal that propelled CDMA technology to prominence, but Apple’s regret is not the basis of a sound antitrust case.

And although it’s unsurprising that manufacturers of premium handsets would like to use antitrust law to extract better terms from their negotiations with standard-essential patent holders, it is astonishing that the current FTC is carrying on the Obama FTC’s willingness to do it for them.

None of this means that Qualcomm is free to charge an unlimited price: standard-essential patents must be licensed on “FRAND” terms, meaning they must be fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory. It is difficult to asses what constitutes FRAND, but the most restrictive method is to estimate what negotiated terms would look like before a patent was incorporated into a standard. “[R]oyalties that are or would be negotiated ex ante with full information are a market bench-mark reflecting legitimate return to innovation,” writes Carl Shapiro, the FTC’s own economic expert in the case.

And that is precisely what happened here: We don’t have to guess what the pre-standard terms of trade would look like; we know them, because they are the same terms that Qualcomm offers now.

We don’t know exactly what the consequence would be for consumers, device makers, and competitors if Qualcomm were forced to accede to the FTC’s benighted vision of how the market should operate. But we do know that the market we actually have is thriving, with new entry at every level, enormous investment in R&D, and continuous technological advance. These aren’t generally the characteristics of a typical monopoly market. While the FTC’s effort to “fix” the market may help Apple and Samsung reap a larger share of the benefits, it will undoubtedly end up only hurting consumers.

In Antitrust & Competition, Apple, Broadband, Federal Trade Commission, FTC v. Qualcomm: Analyzing the theory of the case, Intellectual Property, Justice Department, Patent, Platforms, Regulatory Reform, Standard Setting, Telecommunications, Wireless , , , , , , , , ,
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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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