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Daniel Weinger
Member
Mintz
Daniel Weinger is a Member and litigator at Mintz, whose intellectual property practice focuses on patent and technology litigation at the International Trade Commission, the Federal District Courts, and the Patent Office. He handles disputes involving a wide range of technologies, including software, smartphones (and other converged devices), LEDs, semiconductor circuits and fabrication processes, and wireless technology standards. Viewing patent and technology litigation through the lens of what is best for the business of his clients, Daniel counsels to achieve the best business result possible. The scope of this work includes representing clients through all phases of patent strategy and litigation, both offensive and defensive, from inception of an enforcement program through final resolution. Daniel also works with owners of standard essential patents on issues relating to compliance with FRAND obligations, global enforcement, and licensing.
Prior to law school, Daniel worked as a database programmer with InterSystems, Corp., where he specialized in programming solutions for database development with a focus primarily on integration engines.
While Daniel focuses his practice on intellectual property related matters, he also handles other complex civil litigation related to technology such as trade secret and technology contract disputes. Daniel served as a Special Assistant District Attorney in the Middlesex County (MA) District Attorney’s Office, based in the Framingham, MA, district court. During that time, Daniel prosecuted and tried numerous drug, larceny, breaking and entering, and motor vehicle cases in bench and jury sessions, and conducted day-to-day operations required by an ADA.
Recent Articles by Daniel Weinger
In a previous article, we laid out the basics of “patent pools”, which license patents that are declared essential for technology standards. A recent article published in the University of San Diego Law Review, titled Glory Days: Do the Anticompetitive Risks of Standards-Essential Patent Pools Outweigh Their Procompetitive Benefits? (Glory Days), criticized patent pools, alleging inefficiencies and anticompetitive risks of pools for standard essential patents (SEPs). While the authors make several rebuttable suggestions, the crux of the authors’ complaints about SEP patent pools is that SEP pools should bear all the burdens and expenses of verifying with a litigation-grade level of certainty that all patents in the pool are essential and valid before an implementer will even engage in a licensing discussion with the pool. This approach is not economically or practically realistic and is designed to justify hold out and provide cover for implementers to refuse to engage in licensing discussions.
Implementers of standard essential technology such as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) are constantly attempting to reduce costs for implementation. This behavior has led to certain inefficiencies in the marketplace, such as innovators not being compensated for their contributions to technological standards. The symbiotic relationship between innovators and implementers cannot continue where one side takes all the risk and the other side reaps all the reward. One construct put in place by innovators to extract compensation from the marketplace are patent pools that license patents that are declared essential for technology standards.
