From Around the Blogs

1.  The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to grant cert in WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp., No. 16-1011, a case I have discussed several times previously (see, e.g., here), has been the subject of some recent blog commentaries in addition to those I've already noted, including this one by Steve Brachmann on IP Watchdog and this one on Patently-O citing a paper that Professor Sapna Kamur presented at UT in 2016.   

2.  There also have been at least three recent commentaries on the Federal Circuit's recent decision in Exmark Mfg. Co. v. Briggs & Stratton Power , which as I noted last month arguably opens the door a bit wider to the use of the entire market value as the royalty base.  For other discussions, see this one by Cass Christenson & Rob Kramer & Carl Bretscher on IP Watchdog; this one by David Long on Essential Patents; and this one by Mark Engstrom on Kluwer.

3.  IPKat recently published an interesting post titled Trial Sequence in SEP Litigation-Time for a Rejig?, discussing some dicta of Justice Carr in TQ Delta v. Zyxel to the effect that in FRAND/SEP cases it might make sense for the court to conduct the FRAND royalty trial before the trial on infringement and validity--what in the U.S.  is referred to as a "reverse bifurcation," such as Judge Holderman performed in Innovatio.  Hat tip to Norman Siebrasse for bringing this to my attention.

4.  Some other recent posts relevant to SEP/FRAND issues include Peter Picht, Standard Essential Patents, Antitrust, and Market Power on IP Watchdog; Joff Wild, The State of Mobile SEP Licensing, on the IAM Blog; and Michael Risch, What Is Essential?  Measuring the Overdeclaration of Standards Patents, on the Written Description Blog (discussing a recent paper by Sitzing, Sääskilahti, Royer, and Van Audenrode titled Over-Declaration of Standard Essential Patents and Determinants of Essentiality (I have not yet read the paper myself).