A group of judges, former judges and government officials, law professors and economists with expertise in antitrust law and patent law sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim earlier today applauding his recent announcements that the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) would now take a balanced, evidence-based approach in applying antitrust law to patent licensing, especially to patented innovations that have been contributed to technological standards. Read more
Tag: Antitrust
Foreign Antitrust Regulators Are Threatening American Innovation
By David Lund & Matthew Barblan
American businesses are suffering as foreign governments improperly use their antitrust laws to discriminate against American companies. Recently, the United States Chamber of Commerce assembled an International Competition Policy Expert Group to examine this problem. Read more
SONA and Songwriters Fight DOJ’s Misguided 100% Licensing Rule
Things are heating up in the lawsuit filed by Songwriters of North America and three of its members (SONA) challenging the new gloss of the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the 75-year-old consent decrees that govern the licensing practices of ASCAP and BMI, the two largest performance rights organizations (PROs). Read more
Google Image Search and the Misappropriation of Copyrighted Images
Cross-posted from the Mister Copyright blog.
Last week, American visual communications and stock photography agency Getty Images filed a formal complaint in support of the European Union’s investigation into Google’s anti-competitive business practices. The Getty complaint accuses Google of using its image search function to appropriate or “scrape” third-party copyrighted works, thereby drawing users away from the original source of the creative works and preserving its search engine dominance. Read more
Busting Smartphone Patent Licensing Myths
CPIP has released a new policy brief, Busting Smartphone Patent Licensing Myths, by Keith Mallinson, Founder of WiseHarbor. Mr. Mallinson is an expert with 25 years of experience in the wired and wireless telecommunications, media, and entertainment markets.
Mr. Mallinson discusses several common myths concerning smartphone patent licensing and argues that antitrust interventions and SSO policy changes based on these myths may have the unintended consequence of pushing patent owners away from open and collaborative patent licensing. Read more