by Kevin Coates | Oct 23, 2013 | News from around the Web
From Patent Law Blog (Patently-O): Another Means-Plus-Function Patent: Invalid as Indefinite “By Dennis Crouch Ibormeith IP v. Mercedes-Benz (Fed. Cir. 2013) Ibormeith’s patent covers a "sleepiness monitor" intended to sense when a vehicle driver is getting sleepy. This is obviously an important topic that results in thousands of annual traffic...
by Kevin Coates | Oct 23, 2013 | News from around the Web
From The IPKat: Still on Pinckney, the CJEU, offline distribution and Latin mottos “ Ian is simply the best at telling Brussels I-related jokes Private international law as applied to online IP infringements is notoriously a topic for endless discussions, whether during social gatherings or within more formal settings. Following yesterday’s post on Case C-170/12 Pinckney, the IPKat has received an additional contribution from learned Dr Ge Chen (University of Cambridge), who will also present on this very topic during tomorrow’s CIPIL Lecture (you can see the other events scheduled for what in Cambridge is knowns as the Michaelmas Term here). Here’s what Ge writes: "The CJEU is an exciting institution [Merpel has always thought so]. It often drops bombs in reference cases that pose thorny questions such as the application of Article 5(3) of the Brussels I. Last time it was in eDate/Martinez, where the Court broke through the jurisdiction rule long entrenched in Shevill, prioritising the “centre of interests” of personality rights as the place of damages and allowing full damages to be awarded there. This time, the CJEU again drops three dramatic bombs in Pinckney, dissenting with the AG’s Opinion and rendering somewhat unexpected answers to French Cour de Cassation’s seemingly irrelevant questions. To understand Pinckney, a basic fact should never be overlooked: the reference questions were about online copyright infringement (online distribution of infringing CDs as conducted by UK dealers, which seemed not to be in dispute, and making infringing contents available online, which was completely hypothetical), whereas the infringement committed by the defendant in question was the reproduction of CDs (alas! the Austrian company admitted it to challenge French courts’ jurisdiction), plus an implied (but certain) act of offline distribution, without...
by Kevin Coates | Oct 17, 2013 | News from around the Web
From CPI RSS: Patently Obvious: Why Seeking Injunctions on Standard-Essential Patents Subject to a FRAND Commitment Can Violate Section 2 of the Sherman Act “ Technical standards are a necessary exception to a competitive marketplace based upon feature differentiation, but they pose risks because of the market power they confer on holders of standard-essential patents ("SEPs," which generally speaking are technically essential and must be licensed in order to implement the standard). This is particularly true when the standard is widely adopted and there are no reasonable alternatives to its use. In such circumstances, a SEP owner can use the threat of an injunction to extract supracompetitive royalties or exclude competition entirely. This "lock-in" and related market power is what distinguishes SEPs from typical "differentiating patents" that are not incorporated into a formal standard-and is what makes Section 2 of the Sherman Act a powerful and appropriate tool to regulate SEP abuse. The basic aim of the patent system is to create strong incentives to innovate and compete through feature differentiation, leading to consumer choice and competitive markets. As part of the patent grant, owners of differentiating patents may license their patents for a royalty, or enforce their rights to exclude infringers through an injunction or an action for damages. These rights, on their own, do not confer market power on the owner of a differentiating patent. Free riders (would-be infringers) can choose to work around differentiating patents or license the patented technology if it is available. And when disputes arise and a differentiating patent holder seeks to exercise its right to exclude via an injunction, the usual eBay factors...
by Kevin Coates | Oct 16, 2013 | News from around the Web
From CPI RSS: Supplement to Platform Economics: The Economics of Multi-Sided Businesses “ (Click here for a PDF version of the article.) I’ve written the following articles on multi-sided platforms since the publication of Platform Economics: Essays on Multi-Sided Businesses in December 2011. Hopefully, you’ll find them useful. The first article, the “Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platforms,” provides a survey of the literature on multi-sided platforms that is relevant to competition policy through the end of 2012. The other three articles cover different aspects of multi-sided platforms. “Governing Bad Behavior” is about the use of rules and regulations by platforms to govern their communities. “Economics of Vertical Restraints for Multi-Sided Platforms” examines the pro-competitive and anti-competitive explanations for vertical restraints for platforms. “Attention Rivalry Among On Line Platforms” shows how seemingly different online platforms compete for harvesting consumer attention and selling this to advertisers. “The Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platform Businesses.” Roger Blair and Daniel Sokol, eds., Oxford Handbook on International Antitrust Economics, Oxford University Press, Forthcoming; University of Chicago Institute for Law & Economics Olin Research Paper No. 623. (With Richard Schmalensee.) This Chapter provides a survey of the economics literature on multi-sided platforms with particular focus on competition policy issues, including market definition, mergers, monopolization, and coordinated behavior. It provides a survey of the general industrial organization theory of multi-sided platforms and then considers various issues concerning the application of antitrust analysis to multi-sided platform businesses. It shows that it is not possible to know whether standard economic models, often relied on for antitrust analysis, apply to multi-sided platforms without explicitly considering the existence of multiple customer...
by Kevin Coates | Oct 13, 2013 | News from around the Web
From Who’s Competing?: The Laws of the Game – More on EU Law & DRM “There have been questions surrounding the legality of videogame console ‘modchips’ for many years. We may be about to see some authoritative answers for the first time as a number of cases come before the EU Courts. Two cases, stemming from legal actions instigated by Nintendo in Italy (Case C-355/12) and Germany (Case C-458/13), have...