François Lévêque on "Technology Standards, Patents and Antitrust"

Last night visiting professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley and professor of Law and Economics at Cerna, Ecole des mines de Paris François Lévêque gave an evening lecture on "Technology Standards, Patents and Antitrust."

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 described 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.

You can read his papers on "Licensing Commitments in Standard Setting Organizations" and "Technology Standards, Patents, and Antitrust" by following the links. 

Media from the event will soon be posted to MediaBerkman.