According to a Reuters report: “Congress is considering whether companies that hold patents essential to a standard, such as a digital movie format, should be forbidden from asking that infringing products be banned from the U.S. market.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee will discuss the antitrust impact of sales bans this week, and will hear testimony from members of the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department.
As is standard now, the companies holding these essential patents are expected to license them, even to competitors, on fair terms. “The expectation is they will make less on each license, but will license the technology so broadly that the patent will still be extremely lucrative,” details Reuters.
But as lawsuits and competition related to smartphones have increased in number and intensity, Motorola Mobility (recently purchased by Google) has even asked for sales bans on products that infringe on some of these essential patents.
“The FTC, in recent comments to the International Trade Commission, which can ban infringing products from the U.S. market, warned that the owners of standard essential patents can sometimes demand too much for licensing fees and use the considerable threat of an injunction to win unreasonable rates. It urged the ITC to refrain from barring infringing products from the U.S. market if the patent in question is essential to an industry standard,” according to the article.
But Motorola Mobility argues that such bans will help to prevent rivals and competition from refusing to pay licensing fees.
According to a Reuters report: “Congress is considering whether companies that hold patents essential to a standard, such as a digital movie format, should be forbidden from asking that infringing products be banned from the U.S. market.”
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