Posts Tagged: "USPTO-DOJ-NIST joint policy letter on SEPs"

In withdrawing the 2013 statement, the new 2019 guidance by the DOJ, NIST and the USPTO states the obvious, i.e. that there is no difference in the law between F/RAND assured standard essential patents and all other patents. While some would have perhaps liked to break the unitarity approach of the patent system so as to weaken remedies against the infringement of essential patents, a legal system that would apply a different standard to standard essential patents as opposed to other patents would violate U.S. trade obligations.

I recently became frustrated after reading an essay in the AIPLA newsletter by an attorney with Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP on the topic of the new USPTO-DOJ-NIST Joint Policy Statement on Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments. I have seldom seen a writing where I disagree with everything a man writes, with the exception of a joke and his name. I took it apart paragraph by paragraph; my comments follow in red, while the author’s original text is in black.