Technology Standards, Patents and Antitrust
François Lévêque, Visiting professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley
The number of patents worldwide has increased enormously in the past 20 years, as has the number of technology standards. Standard setting organizations (“SSOs”) have proliferated to define common industry technology standards, which must then be licensed to users of the standard by their respective owners. Patent pools have become important mechanisms for efficiently licensing patents, which are often inevitable components of standards, and for mitigating the dangers of so-called “patent thickets.” Both SSOs and patent pools can be welfare enhancing and pro-competitive, but they also can raise challenging antitrust concerns including patent ambush and hold-up. Professor Leveque will describe his recent work that analyzes the economic and antitrust aspects of patent pools and SSOs, reviews recent antitrust cases against Rambus and Qualcomm for abuse of the standard-setting process, and recommends appropriate policies for antitrust analysis of standard setting.
About François
François Lévêque is professor of Law and Economics at Cerna, Ecole des mines de Paris, PARISTECH and visiting professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley