Antitrust Suits No ‘Panacea’ for Failed Patent Talks: DOJ Official
DOJ’s Antitrust Division will bring enforcement actions when anticompetitive conduct by standard-essential patent holders or other players in the standards development process harms competition, Economics Director-Enforcement Jeffrey Wilder told a Global Competition Review summit Wednesday. But not every patent licensing…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
dispute “invites an antitrust challenge,” said Wilder. Though antitrust claims are no “panacea for failed bilateral negotiation,” antitrust should play a role “when the standards-setting process is used to thwart competition and harm consumers,” he said. He vowed the division will promote policies “that encourage good-faith licensing negotiation” and give “clearer guidance” on how “bad-faith conduct can hinder competition.” It will support standards-development organizations adopting intellectual property rights policies “that address licensing inefficiencies and enable the dissemination of standardized products,” he said: The division will try to be “transparent” about its enforcement priorities and policy changes.