Patents Court (England and Wales) Issues Injunction in SEP Case

On IPKat, Ashley Merelle Ward has a comprehensive write-up of Mr. Justice Carr's decision, released last week, in TQ Delta LLC v. ZyXEL Communications Ltd.  Mr. Justice Carr had earlier determined that one of the two SEPs asserted in the present action was valid, essential, and infringed, but it is due to expire in a few months.  In this fairly brief decision Mr. Justice Carr concludes, among other things, that ZyXEL engaged in holdout, given that negotiations over several hundred asserted FRAND-committed SEPs began in 2013, and given ZyXEL's reluctance to commit to whether it would be bound by the court's FRAND determination.  He also refuses to stay the injunction to permit ZyXEL to fulfill certain unspecified pending orders and denies leave to appeal.

Ms. Ward recently has posted two other FRAND updates that I had been meaning to bring to readers' attention.  The first, titled Your FRANDly Update: HTC v Ericsson, 5G/IoT SEP Licensing Consultation, Globalization of FRAND, European Parliament SEP analysis & more, provides links to, among other documents, a recently published In-Depth Analysis for the JURI Committee titled Standard Essential Patents and the Internet of Things, the abstract to which reads as follows:

This in-depth analysis, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the JURI Committee, assesses the European Commission of (EC) Communication of 29 November 2017 on the EU approach to Standard Essential Patents. The report examines the principles identified in the Communication with respect to the Commission’s proposals on (i) increasing transparency on SEPs; (ii) determining valuation of SEPs( Standard Essential Patents) and FRAND ( Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) terms; and (iii) enforcement.

The report evaluates the efficient resolution of licensing disputes over FRAND, including via litigation, arbitration and mediation, licensing pools and collective licensing. The current document also puts forward some policy recommendations to, inter alia, enhance the general environment of FRAND licencing in the context of SEPs.

The post also links to two competing sets of draft principles for licensing SEPs, one published last fall and backed by IP Europe and Nokia, and the other more recently by the Fair Standards Alliance and ACT The App Association.  Ms. Ward's other post, titled Your FRANDly Update: Ericsson v HTC, FRAND in India, jurisdictional issues (again), Unwired Planet v Huawei, ASUS v Interdigital and more discusses . .  well, the title pretty much says it all.