Patent Challenges for Standard-Setting in the Global Economy: Lessons from Information and Communication Technology examines how leading national and multinational standard-setting organizations (SSOs) address patent disclosures, licensing terms, transfers of patent ownership, and other issues that arise in connection with developing technical standards for consumer and other microelectronic products, associated software and components, and communications networks including the Internet. Attempting to balance the interests of patent holders, other participants in standard-setting, standards implementers, and consumers, the report calls on SSOs to develop more explicit policies to avoid patent holdup and royalty-stacking, ensure that licensing commitments carry over to new owners of the patents incorporated in standards, and limit injunctions for infringement of patents with those licensing commitments. The report recommends government measures to increase the transparency of patent ownership and use of standards information to improve patent quality and to reduce conflicts of laws across countries.

Patent Challenges for Standard-Setting in the Global Economy: Lessons from Information and Communication Technology examines how leading national and multinational standard-setting organizations (SSOs) address patent disclosures, licensing terms, transfers of patent ownership, and other issues that arise in connection with developing technical standards for consumer and other microelectronic products, associated software and components, and communications networks including the Internet. Attempting to balance the interests of patent holders, other participants in standard-setting, standards implementers, and consumers, the report calls on SSOs to develop more explicit policies to avoid patent holdup and royalty-stacking, ensure that licensing commitments carry over to new owners of the patents incorporated in standards, and limit injunctions for infringement of patents with those licensing commitments. The report recommends government measures to increase the transparency of patent ownership and use of standards information to improve patent quality and to reduce conflicts of laws across countries.

Patent holders are increasingly making voluntary, public commitments to limit the enforcement and other exploitation of their patents. The best-known form of patent pledge is the so-called FRAND commitment, in which a patent holder commits to license patents to manufacturers of standardized products on terms that are “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory.” Patent pledges have also been appearing in fields well beyond technical standard-setting, including open source software, green technology and the biosciences. This book explores the motivations, legal characteristics and policy goals of these increasingly popular private ordering tools.

The wealth of many of today's businesses comprises the collective knowledge and innovation of their employees and leaders. In the global economy, innovation has become as valuable as gold. Consequently intellectual property protection has become the focus of considerable legal and regulatory attention, at both an international and national level. Theft, piracy, and infringements on IP can be revealed at every level, from the state to the individual. Patents, Profits and Power examines the less desirable players on the world stage, why they choose to defy the law, and how the rest of the world is responding. The book also examines how the internet is changing the rules of intellectual property protection. It is packed with international case studies and examples to illustrate the impact of the internet on the development, control and protection of valuable ideas, products and services. This title will prove an invaluable reference source for anyone who is involved in protecting intellectual property.

Patent Law in Global Perspective addresses critical and timely questions in patent law from a truly global perspective, with contributions from leading patent law scholars from various countries. Offering fresh insights and new approaches to evaluating key institutional, economic, doctrinal, and practical issues, these chapters reflect critical analyses and review developments in national patent laws, efforts to reform the global patent system, and reconfigure geopolitical interests. Professors Ruth L. Okediji and Margo A. Bagley bring together the first collection to explore patent law issues through the lens of economic development theory, international relations, theoretical foundations for the patent law system in the global context, and more. Topics include: the role of patent law in economic development; the efficacy of patent rights in facilitating innovation; patents and access to medicines; comparative patentability standards (including subject matter eligibility for biotechnology and software inventions); limitations and exceptions to patent scope and protection (including exhaustion, compulsory licensing, and research exceptions); patents on plants and other living organisms; and the impact of emerging economies on global patent system governance. The contributors provide a wealth of original insight and thought-provoking discussion that will be of great interest and benefit to scholars, policymakers, and practitioners alike.

In the last two decades, accelerating technological progress, increasing economic globalization and the proliferation of international agreements have created new challenges for intellectual property law. In this collection of articles in honor of Professor Joseph Straus, more than 60 scholars and practitioners from the Americas, Asia and Europe provide legal, economic and policy perspectives on these challenges, with a particular focus on the challenges facing the modern patent system. Among the many topics addressed are the rapid development of specific technical fields such as biotechnology, the relationship of exclusive rights and competition, and the application of territorially limited IP laws in cross-border scenarios.