Essential patent
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Licensing of patents |
|---|
| Overviews |
| Licensing · Royalties |
| Types |
| Compulsory licensing · Cross-licensing Defensive Patent License Defensive termination Fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND, RAND) Shop right |
| Strategies |
| Catch and release Defensive patent aggregation Patentleft · Patent monetization Patent pool · Stick licensing |
| Clauses in patent licenses |
| Field-of-use limitation |
An essential patent is a patent which discloses and claims one or more inventions that are required to practice a given industry standard. [1] Standardisation bodies, therefore, often require members disclose and grant licenses to patents and pending patent applications that they own and that cover a standard that the body is developing. Failure to do so is a form of patent misuse.
If standards bodies fail to get licenses to all patents that are essential to practicing a standard, then the owners of those unlicensed patents can often demand royalties from those who ultimately adopt the standards. This is what happened, for example, to the GIF and JPEG standards.
[edit] References
[edit] See also
- Patent ambush, a situation where a member of a standards organization withholds information about patents they own during development of a proposed standard and subsequently claims them to be relevant to the standard as adopted.
- Patent map
- Patent pool
- Patent thicket
- Orange-Book-Standard
[edit] External links
- "Potential Antitrust Liability Based on a Patent Owner's Manipulation of Industry Standard Setting", Proceedings of ABA Antitrust Section Spring Meeting (2003) by Janice M. Mueller.
- "Patent Misuse Through the Capture of Industry Standards", 17 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 623 (2002) by Janice M. Mueller.
