WIPO: Mobile Phone Companies on Patents & Standards.
On November 29, 2006, WIPO will host a colloquium on selected patent issues under the title Standards and Patents.
Mr. Tim Frain, Director of Intellectual Property Rights, Regulatory Affairs, Nokia Corporation, Farnborough, Hampshire, has provided a presentation dealing with this issue. A corresponding paper is also available. Mr. Frain explores the current debate about the perceived shortcomings in the patent regime in the standardisation context, specifically concerning the policy question of ensuring access to essential patents for interoperability purposes in the public interest. He explores possible approaches that might be available from both a legislative and self-regulatory standpoint:
From the legislative perspective the paper proposes a possible new solution based on introducing a Patent Misuse doctrine into the patent law domain. This would have the potential to render a patent unenforceable for interoperability purposes having regard to both the public interest in allowing access to the patent, and to the patent owner's behaviour in seeking to allow or block access.
From a self-regulation perspective the paper discusses the current project in ETSI to review the ETSI IPR policy, and specifically presents the so-called Minimum Change Optimum Impact (MCOI) proposal jointly contributed by Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia.
Vodafone suggested outcomes of a further political evaluation are to reconcile protection of genuine innovation and proper functioning of competition thanks to:
Greater transparency of licensing terms - to allow the market to work properly
Earlier transparency of relevant patents - to create legal certainty and allow risk assessment and technical/business decisions
Greater quality - to be able to determine what is a relevant or not a relevant patent
According to Mr. Davey, policymakers should consider in particular measures as follows:
Greater transparency
Promote the use of strong disclosure policies by SDO
Earlier transparency
Support the adoption of early publication rules (less than 18 months!) by SDO
Foster faster processes to produce patents and patent decisions
Greater quality
Harmonise protection regimes and interpretation practices
Grant quality patents, not numerous patents, to promote innovation
Statements concerning the ETSI Intellectual Property Rights Policy can be found in Annex 6 on pages 39pp. of ETSI Rules of Procedure, 23 November 2005.
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Dipl.-Phys. Axel H Horns is Patentanwalt (German Patent Attorney),
European Patent Attorney as well as European Trade Mark Attorney. In particular, he is Member of:
WIPO will host a colloquium on selected patent issues under the title 
