[governance] The US Department of Justice and USPTO call for compulsory licenses on thousands of "standards-essential" patents

[Lee W McKnight]

Actually...one might geopolitically view the USPTO policy change as primarily motivated at forcing a truce among device manufacturers/patent holders.

That is, mainly impacting device sales wherein various manufacturers (cough, Apple and Samsung primarily, but sometimes also other Google/Android allies; and also occasional bit players Microsoft and R.I.M.) did indeed use patent claims to assert a monopoly in national markets to smart phones with particular feature sets.  

Those skirmishes played out primarily between US, South Korean, and German courts determining to permit or block   market access for devices, over last few years. 

So yeah, definitely it's about monopoly power; if we are speaking of patents that's the whole idea.

Why the truce now? Last I was paying attention, South Korean courts had sided with Samsung in a patent case v Apple which would block iPhones from South Korea; while a US jury sided with Apple over basically the same set of contested patent claims, which could block Samsung from US markets. Shocking! ; )  

Anyway, after all the major players spent billions arming themselves with more patents to play more rounds of these games over last few years, for most consumers we might view the move to compulsory licenses on reaonable terms as a positive. Maybe, Qualcomm and Apple would disagree, since generally they have the strongest hands; except Apple's hand in telecom/mobile-like spaces is not as strong as one might think, since they are relative newbies; so maybe they are happy too.

Anyway, re connection to global Internet governance, one might view this as a win for open Internet/open innovation policies generally, limiting power of particular firms to keep others out of the market, and generally positive for increasing Internet access as Sala noted.

Re the USPTO + IANA->Dept Commerce v ITU-T hypothesis; honestly that's not so plausible since most standards action we are discussing plays out in 3GPP which ties into ITU-R; with most action really in the 3GPP space which is entirely home to giant companies and not so much/no civil society or even government people.  They're all hanging in Barcelona I think this week or was it last; if we can't answer then sadly  none of us are paying enough attention to where - the money - is.

Meaning, the industrial elephants roam where they want, with ITU-R having a minimal truth in advertising role in saying what is really 'true' 4g; except all mobile companies everywhere worldwide lie and market their 3g as - 4g. Since that's the hottest new brand, if not actually the ITU/3GPP technical spec any of them can just yet.

(And remember in Dubai even ITU critics made nice noises about ITU-R, which is not that controversial and knows how to play nicely with the big boys of industry, and governments worldwide re spectrum or orbital arc allocation. Occasionally controversial subjects in past decades, not so much now.

Noone from IETF plays much in these fields either I believe, so in that sense it does not relate to core Internet protocols either.

Still, those specs only tie in part to device-embedded standards; and I believe the truth is the same as always; which nis no matter what you call it, the first law of 3g or 4g is...you pay Qualcomm patent royalties.

Which, I agree with Suresh now, is not so much a matter of Internet governance, as a fact of market power due to a strong - really strong - patent portfolio, to help jam lots more users in same amount of spectrum.  Which Qualcomm built the old-fashioned way, through decades of research with a slightly different view than conventional wisdom. 

My - 5 cents summary: USPTO ruling is generally a win for consumers worldwide; which will help lower device costs/enhance Internet access; but does not touch much directly any of the usual suspect Internet governance agencies, instead being a generic step towards liberalizing terms of technology goods trade of the WTO variety. 

One which I strongly suspect the South Koreans and the Germans/EU and others knew about well in advance; through 'enhanced cooperation'? ; )

Lee
________________________________________
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] on behalf of Suresh Ramasubramanian [suresh at hserus.net]
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 11:59 PM
To: Jeremy Malcolm
Cc: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: [governance] The US Department of Justice and USPTO call for compulsory licenses on thousands of "standards-essential" patents

Jeremy Malcolm [27/02/13 10:24 +0530]:
>The patents regime directly affect the cost and functionality of Internet
>access devices, especially mobile devices that are critical to access in
>the developing world, therefore I agree with Sala, a very central issue
>for Internet governance discussions.

That is questionable given that there is a much wider variety of access
devices, and moreover, cost at least is based on economies of scale, market
conditions etc. There is very little that a patent in this field does to
confer monopoly given the wide variety of smartphones from various
manufacturers, not to mention PCs / laptops etc.


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