April 21, 2009

Peeing on the Pool

Four companies pooled patents covering the industry standard for music and data CDs. The standard, set in the early 1990s, was codified in the "Orange Book." The Orange Book standard created compatibility for CD readers and writers, thus creating a single market. Consumers could buy CDs, knowing that they would work with any player, because of the Orange Book standard. If you want to manufacture a CD writer, you have to first pop to the one-stop shop for a patent pool license.

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Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:41 PM | Antitrust | Comments (1)

December 6, 2008

In the Pool

Stanford University academics Ryan Lampe and Petra Moser, in "Do Patent Pools Encourage Innovation?":

Regulators favor patent pools to encourage innovation in industries where overlapping patents and excessive litigation suppress innovation. With patent pools, member firms share patents freely with each other and offer one-stop licenses to outside firms. Thus patent pools are expected to promote innovation by reducing litigation risks for pool members and lowering transaction costs for outside firms. Our data confirm that pools reduce litigation risks for members and that pool members patent more in the years leading up to the pool. Pool members, however, patent less as soon as the pool is established and only resume patenting after the pool dissolves. Performance data suggest that innovation slowed as soon as the pool had been established and resumed only after the pool had been dissolved.

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Posted by Patent Hawk at 2:03 PM | Antitrust | Comments (3)

October 15, 2008

Anticompetitive

"A patent by its very nature is anticompetitive." So the CAFC remarked in affirming summary judgment punting of an antitrust case based upon patent protection, and a kickback ("reverse payment") settlement agreement between patentee Bayer and generic makers, over Cipro®, covered by 4,670,444.

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Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:42 PM | Antitrust | Comments (0)

March 31, 2008

Anti Trust

The American Antitrust Institute (aai) is a lobbyist corporation backed by undisclosed lucre, doubtlessly large corporations. Their spiritual mentor is Teddy Roosevelt: rough rider, trust buster, who once observed: "Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe."

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Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:40 AM | Antitrust | Comments (0)

September 30, 2006

Monsanto Sprayed

Monsanto makes Roundup, a broad-spectrum herbicide. Monsanto's patent on Roundup expired in September 2000, but it still exercises monopolistic control of the market through tying arrangements with its still-patented Roundup-resistant seeds: buy the seeds, and you must buy Roundup. Spray the cropland growing the resistant seeds, killing the weeds, but the crop is unscathed. The whole scheme is now under attack on two fronts: anti-trust and patent validity.

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Posted by Patent Hawk at 2:43 PM | Antitrust | Comments (0)

August 16, 2006

Seedy

The Scruggs brothers planted, without license, Monsanto genetically modified, herbicide resistant, soybeans and cotton. Monsanto asserted 5,352,605; 5,196,525; and 5,322,938 against them. Ornery, the Scruggs went down fighting, in trial and on appeal (CAFC 04-1532).

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Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:24 PM | Antitrust | Comments (0)

March 27, 2006

Tying

Phillips offers its pool of patents covering manufacturing compact discs (CDs) to licensees. Princo was one, starting in 1997, until it stopped paying the license fees. So Phillips sued.

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Posted by Patent Hawk at 9:34 AM | Antitrust | Comments (0)

March 1, 2006

Market Power

In a nod to economic reality, and catching up with perceived Congressional intent, in Illinois Tool Works v. Independent Ink, the Supreme Court (04-1329) ruled that a patent does not necessarily confer market power.

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Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:07 AM | Antitrust | Comments (0)

September 23, 2005

Patent Pools

As a grant of monopoly power, patents have long been legally associated with antitrust. Using patents in an anticompetitive manner is patent misuse, and provides a defense to infringers. But is a patent pool, which may combine patents of related technology under a single license, ipso facto anticompetitive? In the case of Phillips v. The International Trade Commission, the CAFC (04-1361) didn't think so.

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Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:15 PM | Antitrust | Comments (0)