IAM – February 2022
One of the major debates dominating the current discourse on resolving disputes relating to Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) is its ever-increasing extraterritorial implications. It is becoming common practice for courts to be required to address issues such as global rate setting and the use of Anti-Suit Injunctions (ASIs) within a geopolitical and geo-economics paradigm.
Defensive actions such as ASIs are not new in the world of patent litigation – but corrective measures were introduced to prevent their use. Today, one of few remaining ways to ensure that global FRAND rates are determined fairly and free from geopolitical influences and frivolous litigation like ASIs is to take this task away from national courts and delegate it to mutually trusted international arbitration bodies. Failure of finding a way to resolve global FRAND rates disputes may have much more profound implications than we are prepared for.