InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[olddog967]

revlis: Interesting decision. The High Court apparently must have calculated a ridiculously low royalty rate to come up with their damage award amount.

One interesting part of their decision was that they agree with other courts that under French law a FRAND commitment does not automatically grant a license:

Outline of the court’s decision
(1) Whether or not license agreement was reached
Firstly, it was admitted that French law was the proper law to determine whether or not a licence agreement based on the FRAND commitment was reached. (Neither party argued against the opinion that French law is the proper law). In French law, at least an offer and acceptance of the license agreement are necessary to execute the license agreement. However, the court indicated that Samsung’s FRAND commitment under the ETSI IPR policy cannot be interpreted as the required offer, for the following reasons.

1. Although French law does not require determination of the compensation to execute the license agreement, the FRAND commitment provides no clue to the scope of the binding effect of the license agreement. The FRAND commitment does not set a royalty rate for the license agreement, nor the geographical scope nor the time period of the license agreement.
2. The article in the ETSI IPR policy states ‘ETSI rules that members (and people other than ETSI members) shall negotiate fairly and sincerely about the essential IPR for FRAND.’ So, this article is premised on the subsequent conduct of negotiations between parties.
3. When the present IPR policy was adopted, ETSI attempted to rule that users are granted ‘automatic licenses’, but abandoned the attempt due to strong opposition from members.

Interpreting the FRAND commitment as the offer for the contract results in admitting the ‘automatic license’. Therefore, this interpretation is improper. The court therefore indicated that the FRAND commitment could not be interpreted as an offer of a licence agreement.


http://blog.patentology.com.au/2014/06/samsung-can-enforce-frand-committed.html