Science Research Management ›› 2011, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (11): 77-83.

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The new development of U.S. antitrust policy on patent pool and its impacts on China

Zhan Ying   

  1. Center for Studies on Intellectual Property Rights, Zhongnan University ofEconomics and Law, Wuhan 430073, China
  • Received:2010-05-17 Revised:2011-01-05 Online:2011-11-27 Published:2011-11-22

Abstract: In recent years, the antitrust policy on patent pool of the United States is becoming looser ever than before, when the policy has become more tolerant since 1995. The United States not only abandon the internationally recognized principle of "fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory" (FRAND), and impose no restrictions on licensing royalty rates of patent pool, but also agree compulsory package licensing and only apply "rule of reason" and exclude "per se rule" in the antitrust review of patent pools. In addition, the U.S. courts have changed the identification rule of "non-essential patent" in the pool. Affected by above sitution, as the major international patent pool licensees, Chinese enterprises will be more difficult to resist the patent pool royalty exploitation and compulsory package licensing. The difficulty for filing an antitrust lawsuit in U.S. will also be increase. The impacts could be found from the case of Wuxi Multimedia versus DVD3C patent pool in June 2008. Therefore, the establishment of China's antitrust system against patent pool needs to be accelerated in behalf of national interest.

Key words: patent pool, U.S. antitrust policy, development, impact

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