Motorola Mobility and Samsung Electronics infringed EU antitrust...

Motorola Mobility and Samsung Electronics infringed EU antitrust law by misusing standard essential patents (SEPs), the European Commission said Tuesday. SEPs are patents essential for implementing a specific industry standard, it said in an FAQ (http://bit.ly/1m7en3s). It’s impossible to manufacture standard-compliant products such as smartphones or tablets without using technologies covered by one or more SEPs, it said. SEPs can confer significant market power on their holders which they wouldn’t have had without the standard, the EC said. Since standards benefit consumers and businesses in terms of interoperability and innovation, standardized technology must be accessible to all interested parties subject to reasonable conditions, it said. To ensure that access, standard-setting bodies require that patent holders agree to license their SEPs on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms to address the issue of market power, it said. The EC wants to stop SEP holders from using SEP-based injunctions to extract licensing conditions that may hamper competition and hurt consumers, and SEP holders should be entitled to appropriate remuneration for the SEPs, it said. The EC accepted several legally binding commitments from Samsung to settle an antitrust case. One is that for five years, Samsung won’t seek injunctions in the European Economic Area, on the basis of any present and future SEPs relating to technologies for smartphones and tablets, against any company that agrees to a particular licensing framework for the relevant SEPs. The licensing framework calls for a negotiating period of up to 12 months, after which, if there’s no agreement, FRAND terms will be determined by a third-party arbitrator such as court, the EC said. The commitments will be monitored by an independent trustee, it said. The EC also said Motorola violated antitrust law by seeking and enforcing an injunction against Apple in a German court on the basis of a smartphone SEP after it had agreed to take a license and be bound by a determination of FRAND royalties by a court. The EC also said it was anticompetitive of Motorola to insist, by threatening to enforce its injunction, that Apple give up its right to challenge the validity or infringement by Apple’s mobile devices of Motorola SEPs. Samsung had no comment. Motorola agrees that injunctions should only be sought against unwilling licensees, and in this case it followed the procedure set by the German courts, spokeswoman Katie Dove told us. “We are now evaluating the EC’s decision."