“At a press conference at Federal Trade Commission headquarters in Washington DC, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz just announced that the U.S. competition enforcement agency has ordered Google to abandon immediately its pursuit of injunctive relief over the standard-essential patents (SEPs) that Motorola Mobility once promised to license to all comers on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “A bipartisan majority of the FTC voted in favor of this order.”
“The Chairman’s speech sounded stronger and more definitive than the actual consent decree (an FTC order to which Google agreed) appears to be. The speech appeared to indicate that Google is precluded from the pursuit of injunctive relief over SEPs, period — but the written announcement says that the order ‘prohibits it from seeking injunctions against a willing licensee, either in federal court or at the ITC,'” Mueller reports. “This means Google can argue that someone is not a willing licensee. In my observation, all SEP abusers claim that the defendant has been unwilling to take a license (or to negotiate at all). I need to see a more detailed version of the consent decree to understand whether it provides meaningful guidelines for distinguishing a ‘willing licensee’ from an unwilling one.”
Mueller reports, “I believe Apple and Microsoft will benefit greatly from this decision… Apple and Microsoft are in a much stronger position than future defendants because the FTC alleged that Google’s Motorola Mobility ‘pursued – or threatened to pursue – injunctions against companies that need to use MMI’s standard-essential patents in their devices and were willing to license them on FRAND terms.’ This suggests to me that Apple and Microsoft were considered willing licensees by the FTC, a finding that should bear considerable weight with U.S. courts and the ITC…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Tick tock, SEP abusers, tick tock.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
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