Category: FTC

FTC Chair and Commissioners Weigh in on SEP Litigation at the ITC

Post author By Joshua Grove
Post date August 24, 2022

The following post comes from Jack Ring, a rising 2L at Scalia Law and a Research Assistant at C-IP².

I. INTRODUCTION

In a previous blog post, we discussed the dispute surrounding standard essential patents (SEPs) between Philips and Thales. That dispute included an investigation before the United States International Trade Commission (ITC).[1] As part of that investigation, Chair Lina Khan and Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) submitted a public interest statement to the ITC (Public Interest Statement or Statement).[2] Commissioner Christine Wilson responded to the Statement in a speech at the “IP & Antitrust: Hot Issues” Conference Organized by Concurrences Review (Response or Remarks).[3]

These competing statements by FTC commissioners illustrate a point of contention regarding SEP policy. The Public Interest Statement, submitted by Chair Khan and Commissioner Slaughter, took a policy stance that an exclusion order against an SEP implementer unfairly favors the SEP holder. Meanwhile, Commissioner Wilson’s Response countered that this policy instead tips the balance heavily in favor of implementers, which in her opinion could stifle SEP-holder innovation. This dichotomy of policy goals underlays some of the decisions discussed in the previous blog post about the Philips v. Thales appeal. There, Chief Judge Colm Connolly of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware avoided making policy in his decision, explicitly reserving that for a higher court.[4] The ITC’s Commission opinion in the ITC Investigation took no position on many issues, potentially to avoid tackling these tough issues.[5] And finally, the Federal Circuit affirmed Chief Judge Connolly’s order on the narrowest grounds, likewise sidestepping the policy concerns debated in the Public Interest Statement and Response.[6]

Additionally, as Commissioner Wilson’s Remarks note, Apple and Ericsson are now involved in SEP litigation spanning U.S. courts, international courts, and the ITC.[7] This will once again provide ample opportunity for multiple jurisdictions, including the ITC, to weigh these policy and public interest concerns.

II. CHAIR KHAN AND COMMISSIONER SLAUGHTER’S PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

Chair Khan and Commission Slaughter’s Statement advanced a broad policy argument through the lens of an “increasing[] concern that SEP holders . . . are seeking exclusionary orders . . . for the purpose of gaining leverage.” Through that lens, the Public Interest Statement sought to answer the question, “Is it in the public interest to issue an ITC exclusion order based on a standard essential patent (SEP) where a United States district court has been asked to determine fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms?” Answering its own posed question, the Statement urged the ITC to consider the statutory public interest factors[8] with particular attention to the impact an exclusion order obtained by a SEP owner against an SEP implementer would have on competition and consumers in the United States.

Chair Khan and Commissioner Slaughter’s concern focuses heavily on misconduct—hold-up—by SEP owners. Hold-up refers to an SEP holder’s demand for a royalty rate in excess of a FRAND rate after an implementer is locked into the standard. Alternatively, hold-out refers to an implementer’s bad faith delaying of constructive licensing negotiations or unilaterally rejecting of a license.

The Public Interest Statement argues that an SEP owner seeking an exclusion order of SEPs at the ITC perpetuates an imbalance in bargaining power. Chair Khan and Commissioner Slaughter recognize that opportunism may arise from either side, but they view an exclusion order as granting unfair leverage for an SEP holder. This one-sided view was discussed by Commissioner Wilson in her Response and will be discussed below.

The Public Interest Statement further recognized the ITC’s enforcement role in intellectual property rights and the ITC’s view on that enforcement in footnote twelve. However, Chair Khan and Commissioner Slaughter argue that SEPs present different issues than other patents. In their opinion, a royalty negotiation under threat of an exclusion order tips the scale in favor of the SEP owner, who made a FRAND commitment—a commitment that may have helped them get the standardization in the first place. In their view, the exclusion of firms that are willing and able to take FRAND licenses discourages investment in standard driven products and technology.

Additionally, hidden in the first footnote, the Statement declined to address whether “seeking an exclusion order for FRAND-encumbered SEPs would violate Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.” Section 5 of the FTC act covers unfair acts and practices. If the FTC began enforcing Section 5 against SEP owners seeking exclusion orders in the ITC, that would have some of the most drastic short-term changes in SEP policy. Whether that short-term policy change would stand up to judicial review or be the best policy for cultivating innovation remains to be seen.

The Public Interest Statement ultimately moves on to a larger policy rejecting exclusion orders—the only remedy available from the ITC—whenever a court has been asked to set FRAND terms and can make SEP holders whole. (“As a general matter, exclusionary relief is incongruent and against the public interest where a court has been asked to resolve FRAND terms and can make the SEP holder whole.”) In closing, the Public Interest Statement urges the ITC to take its advice that “under no circumstances should Section 337 remedies . . . take effect” until a court asked to resolve the FRAND rate has rendered its decision.

III. COMMISSIONER WILSON’S RESPONSE

Shortly after Chair Khan and Commissioner Slaughter filed their Statement, Commissioner Wilson of the FTC responded with her own critiques. Her Response recognized the same issues but approached those issues from a balancing standpoint. The Response advocated for weighing the rights of SEP holders and implementers and considering both short- and long-term goals.

Commissioner Wilson expressed concern that Chair Khan and Commissioner Slaughter only view hold-up as an antitrust issue. (“In other words, the actions of SEP holders may be unlawful under the antitrust laws, but the actions of patent implementers are immune from scrutiny under those same laws.”) Commissioner Wilson’s Remarks generally pushed the FTC to embrace a balanced approach that favors neither innovators nor implementers but instead focused on incentivizing competition and innovation.

Responding directly to the Public Interest Statement’s call for the ITC to reject exclusion orders where a court has been asked to set FRAND rates, Commissioner Wilson reasoned that the ITC’s public interest analysis already accounts for this type of analysis. Quoting an article from former ITC commissioner and chair Deanna Tanner Okun, the Response explained that the ITC’s public interest factors and process allow allegedly infringing parties the opportunity to argue the SEP holder violated its commitments to the standard setting organization[9] (the point being, why set a blanket prohibition on exclusion orders when the ITC’s processes already account for considering multiple factors in its public interest analysis?).

Commissioner Wilson’s Remarks also touched on the Apple and Ericsson SEP litigation presently occurring in multiple venues, including the ITC. Those proceedings offer another chance for the ITC to consider the Statement and Response’s policy arguments. However, as Commissioner Wilson flagged, unlike in the Philips proceedings, Apple has not committed to accepting the District Court’s FRAND rate. Apple’s non-commitment could be evidence of hold-out, which Commissioner Wilson specifically raised in her Remarks. This change in the fact pattern from the Philips/Thales dispute illustrates how complex and fact-specific SEP proceedings can be.

At bottom, the Response is concerned that the Public Interest Statement’s proposal would tip the balance in favor of SEP implementers when—in Commissioner Wilson’s view—there should be no thumb on the scale. The Response expressed concern with adoption of a one-size-fits-all approach of denying exclusion orders at the ITC whenever a court has been asked to set a FRAND rate. Rather, she posits that the ITC’s public interest factors anticipated complex litigations like those discussed above. Therefore, by the time a case has reached the final stages at the ITC, the Commission or administrative law judge has the necessary information to evaluate the public interest.

IV. TAKEAWAYS

These two policy proposals from FTC commissioners illustrate the complexity of the SEP policy debate, particularly regarding exclusion orders at the ITC. Moving forward, the Apple and Ericsson disputes in multiple courts including the ITC will provide another opportunity for multiple forums to grapple with these competing policies.

[1] Certain UMTS & LTE Cellular Communications Modules & Products Containing the Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-1240 (USITC).

[2] Written Submission on the Public Interest of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina M. Khan and Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, in the Matter of Certain UMTS and LTE Cellular Communication Modules and Products Containing the Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-1240 (USITC May 16, 2022),

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Written_Submission_on_the_Public_Interest_if_Chair_Khan_and_Co mmissioner_Slaughter_to_ITC.pdf.

[3] Christine Wilson, Comm’r, Fed. Trade Comm’n, Remarks at “IP & Antitrust: Hot Issues” Conference Organized by Concurrences Review (June 8, 2022), https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Wilson-SEPs-speech_FINAL-06-13-2022.pdf.

[4] Koninklijke Philips N.V. v. Thales DIS AIS USA LLC, C.A. 20-1713 (D. Del. May 21, 2021).

[5] Certain UMTS & LTE Cellular Communications Modules & Products Containing the Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-1240, Comm’n Notice (USITC July 6, 2022) (EDIS No. 774681).

[6] Koninklijke Philips N.V. v. Thales DIS AIS USA LLC, No. 2021-2106 (Fed. Cir. July 13, 2022).

[7] Certain Mobile Telephones, Tablet Computers With Cellular Connectivity, & Smart Watches With Cellular Connectivity, Components Thereof, & Products Containing the Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-1299 (USITC).

[8] 19 U.S.C. §§ 1337(d)(1), (f)(1).

[9] Deanna Tanner Okun, Policy Shift Against SEP Rights Poses Risks for U.S. Innovation and Undermines Mandate of the ITC, IPWATCHDOG (May 18, 2022), https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2022/05/18/policy-shift-sep-rights-posesrisks-u-s-innovation-undermines-mandate-itc/id=149116/.

Tags Apple, Christine Wilson, Colm Connolly, Ericsson, FRAND, FTC, ITC, Jack Ring, Lina Khan, Philips v. Thales, Rebecca Slaughter, SEP

FTC ITC Patents

Philips and Thales’ Standard Essential Patent Fight at the Federal Circuit, District Court, and ITC

Post author By Joshua Grove
Post date August 18, 2022

The following post comes from Jack Ring, a rising 2L at Scalia Law and a Research Assistant at C-IP². Click here for a related post.

I. INTRODUCTION

On July 13, 2022, the Federal Circuit affirmed the denial of Thales DIS AIS Deutschland GMBH’s (Thales) motion to enjoin Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Philips) from proceeding in a parallel investigation against Thales at the United States International Trade Commission (ITC).[1] This dispute, stemming from SEP licensing negotiations dating back to 2015, seemed poised to be a vehicle to set SEP policy. It offered an opportunity for the District Court and the Federal Circuit to prevent a party from seeking an exclusion order from the ITC when a court was asked to set FRAND rates. It further offered the ITC the opportunity to apply its public interest factors broadly to the same ends. However, all three courts that heard this dispute sidestepped the policy debate.

On the same day in 2020, Philips brought a district court case in Delaware[2] and an ITC investigation[3] against Thales asserting the same four essential patents. In response, Thales moved for a preliminary injunction to prevent Philips from proceeding at the ITC. Thales claimed inter alia that the ITC investigation was causing irreparable harm to its business by disrupting business and deterring customers. Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly, presiding in Delaware, denied Thales’ preliminary injunction, reasoning that Thales’ claims failed to illustrate irreparable harm.

While Thales’ motion sought to enjoin Philips, granting the preliminary injunction would have effectively stripped the ITC of its jurisdiction. This would have been at odds with the ITC’s statutory scheme. As Chief Judge Connolly acknowledged during his ruling on the motion, Congress authorized patentees to pursue ITC and district court proceedings on parallel tracks. Chief Judge Connolly noted the potential policy issues with granting SEP owners exclusion orders, but he reasoned that he was not the one who should make policy, instead deferring to Congress or a higher court.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit agreed, ruling that Thales failed to present evidence of a likelihood of irreparable harm beyond conclusory customer concerns. The Federal Circuit’s opinion came just seven days after the ITC’s final determination finding no violation of Section 337 and multiple claims of the Asserted Patents invalid.

This appeal and the ITC investigation seemed poised to tackle those big policy issues Chief Judge Connolly declined to answer. However, the subsequent rulings avoided any policy decisions. The Federal Circuit’s narrow holding did not discuss any policy issues, solely focusing on the lack of irreparable harm. The ITC’s finding of no violation meant it needed not consider the statutory public interest factors. The Commission’s prior request for public interest statements request garnered a statement from Chair Lina Khan and Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which lobbied the ITC to deny relief to any Complainants asserting patents that are subject to FRAND-setting litigation in other forums.

II. DISTRICT COURT ACTION

Philips brought two district court cases in Delaware and an ITC investigation against Thales and three of its customers on December 17, 2020.[4] The ITC investigation, Inv. No. 337-TA-1240 (the “ITC investigation”) and one of the Delaware cases, C.A. No. 20-1713 (the “District Court Action”) shared the same asserted patents, which Philips claimed are essential. Those patents are U.S. Patent Nos. 7,944,935, 7,554,943, 8,199,711, and 7,831,271 (collectively, the “Asserted Patents”). The second district court case brought by Philips asserted six additional, non-essential patents, against the same parties, C.A. No. 20-1709[5].

Philips’ complaint sought declaratory judgment setting worldwide FRAND licensing terms and alleged infringement of the Asserted Patents. Thales counterclaimed, alleging breach of contract of Philips’ contractual duties to the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI)[6] and seeking declaratory judgment setting FRAND terms.[7] Contemporaneous with its answer, on March 5, 2021, Thales filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to enjoin Philips from pursuing the ITC investigation. Thales claimed the ITC action divested the district court of its authority and was an attempt to extract a supra-FRAND royalty rate.

Thales argued it was likely to succeed on its breach of contract claim in addition to its declaratory judgment claim because both parties requested the same relief, a FRAND rate determination by the court. On irreparable harm, Thales claimed imminent risk of losing market share, customers, sales, and business opportunity, as well as business disruption, as a result of Philips’ seeking an ITC exclusion order. Thales clarified that the irreparable harm was “the uncertainty and the cloud hanging over our head from now until [the ITC rules].”

At the preliminary injunction hearing in May 2021,[8] Chief Judge Connolly, ruling from the bench, denied Thales’ motion. Chief Judge Connolly found the irreparable harm evidence conclusory and that litigating on parallel tracks in the ITC and District Court did not constitute irreparable harm. Chief Judge Connolly also ruled that Thales had not established likelihood of success. Following denial of the preliminary injunction on May 21, 2021, Thales noticed an appeal to the Federal Circuit on June 21, 2021. The Delaware Action was stayed and administratively closed on August 20, 2021, pending resolution of the ITC investigation.

III. ITC INVESTIGATION

While Thales and Philips litigated in Delaware, the ITC investigation proceeded at full pace. As discussed above, Philips filed its complaint at the ITC on December 17, 2020, the same day as the District Court Action. The complaint asserted the same four patents against Thales and the same three customers plus Telit Wireless Solutions, Inc. and Telit Communications PLC.[9] The Commission instituted the investigation on January 19, 2021.[10]

Following an evidentiary hearing in October 2021, Administrative Law Judge David Shaw found no violation in the Final Initial Determination (ID) on April 1, 2022. In addition to finding no violation, ALJ Shaw found multiple claims of the Asserted Patents invalid. On July 6, 2022, the Commission released a Notice of Determination reviewing certain findings, taking no position on many findings, and affirming portions of the ID. The Commission maintained the finding of no violation, and adopted only the following other findings:

(1) the asserted claims of the ’935 patent, the ’711 patent, the ’943 patent, and the ’271 patent are not infringed; (2) Philips did not satisfy the technical prong of the domestic industry requirement with respect to any of the four asserted patents; (3) claim 9 of the ’711 patent and claim 12 of the ’943 patent are invalid as indefinite; and (4) the asserted claims of the ’271 patent are invalid as indefinite and for lack of written description.

As part of its review, the Commission requested public interest statements from the public. One submission, from Chair Khan and Commissioner Slaughter of the FTC urged the ITC to utilize its Public Interest statute to deny relief to any Complainants asserting patents that are subject to FRAND-setting litigation in other forums.[11] In light of the finding of no violation, the Commission did not need to consider the effect of the proposed remedy on the public interest as required by statute.[12]

IV. APPEAL AT THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT

On July 13, 2022, one week after the ITC released its Final Notice, the Federal Circuit affirmed the District Court’s denial of Thales’ preliminary injunction and awarded costs to Philips. Chief Judge Kimberly Moore’s opinion focused exclusively on Thales’ failure to show it was likely to suffer irreparable harm from Philips’ ITC action. Like Chief Judge Connolly, Chief Judge Moore found the evidence presented conclusory. Thales did not meet its burden because it failed to present evidence that it lost customers, had customers delay purchase, or struggled to acquire new business because of the ongoing ITC proceedings. Rather, the ITC investigation caused customers to voice concerns or express doubt. The Court reasoned that “This type of speculative harm does not justify the rare and extraordinary relief of a preliminary injunction.”

V. TAKEAWAYS

While this dispute seemed prepared to make policy waves in the SEP space, there will be future cases that give rise to similar issues. Even now, Apple and Ericsson are litigating SEPs at the ITC and in District Court.[13] That dispute may reach some of the policy questions raised in this case and specifically in Chair Khan and Commissioner Slaughter’s Public Interest Statement from this investigation.

[1] Koninklijke Philips N.V. v. Thales DIS AIS USA LLC, No. 2021-2106 (Fed. Cir. July 13, 2022).

[2] Koninklijke Philips N.V. v. Thales DIS AIS USA LLC, C.A. 20-1713 (D. Del.).

[3] Certain UMTS & LTE Cellular Communications Modules & Products Containing the Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-1240 (USITC).

[4] The customers include CalAmp Corp., Xirgo Technologies, LLC, and Laird Connectivity, Inc.

[5] Koninklijke Philips N.V. v. Thales DIS AIS USA LLC, C.A. 20-1713 (D. Del.).

[6] Both Philips and Thales are members of ETSI, a standard setting organization for digital cellular communications.

[7] Thales USA answered separately on April 5^th and did not include counterclaims. Thales USA moved to be severed and dismissed as misjoined party under Fed. R. Civ. P. 21 on April 5, 2021.

[8] The transcript of the May 21, 2021, hearing can be found attached to Philips’ Opening Brief to the Federal Circuit.

[9] Philips also asserted the four essential patents against Telit in Delaware District Court, Koninklijke Philips N.V. v Telit Wireless Sols., Inc., C.A. 20-1711 (CFC) (D. Del.).

[10] 86 FR 7305 (Jan. 19, 2021).

[11] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Written_Submission_on_the_Public_Interest_if_Chair_Khan_and_
Commissioner_Slaughter_to_ITC.pdf.

[12] 19 U.S.C. §§ 1337(d)(1), (f)(1).

[13] Certain Mobile Telephones, Tablet Computers With Cellular Connectivity, & Smart Watches With Cellular Connectivity, Components Thereof, & Products Containing Same, Inv. No. 1299 (USITC); Ericsson Inc. v. Apple, Inc., C.A. 6:22-cv-60 (W.D. Tex.).

Tags Colm F. Connolly, David Shaw, ETSI, European Telecommunication Standards Institute, Federal Circuit, Federal Trade Commission, FRAND, FTC, International Trade Commission, ITC, Kimberly Moore, Lina Khan, patents, Philips, Rebecca Slaughter, SEP, Thales

FTC Innovation

Unverified Theory Continues to Inform FTC’s Policies Toward Patent Owners

Post author By Joshua Grove
Post date February 5, 2019

dictionary entry for the word "innovate" The Federal Trade Commission’s unfair competition case against Qualcomm, Inc., has now concluded. The parties gave their closing arguments on Tuesday, January 29, and all that remains is Judge Lucy Koh’s ruling. To prevail, the FTC needed to demonstrate actual, quantifiable harm. It completely failed to do so.

The FTC’s complaint charged Qualcomm with using anticompetitive tactics to maintain its alleged monopoly position as a supplier of certain baseband processors (chips that manage cellular communications in mobile products). Specifically, the FTC alleged that Qualcomm engaged in “exclusionary conduct” through a “no license, no chips” policy in which it supplied CDMA[1] and Premium LTE chips[2] only on the condition that cell phone manufacturers agreed to Qualcomm’s license terms. The FTC claimed that Qualcomm’s conduct reduced competitors’ ability and incentive to innovate and raised prices paid by consumers for cellular devices.

In support of this position, the FTC offered Carl Shapiro, an Economics Professor from Berkeley, as an expert witness. Shapiro argued that Qualcomm’s “no license, no chips” policy gave it the market power to demand “supra-FRAND”[3] royalties. He claimed these royalties harmed competition by raising rivals’ costs, weakening them as competitors, and deterring them from doing R&D. Shapiro asserted that Qualcomm had monopoly power over CDMA and Premium LTE markets through 2016.

There are (at least) two glaring errors regarding the FTC’s and Shapiro’s arguments. First, the relevant market definitions for “CDMA” and “Premium LTE” chips are fatally flawed. Regarding CDMA, the FTC defined the relevant market solely as CDMA chips, yet the market includes both CDMA and WCDMA[4] chips, with WCDMA selling 5x more chips than CDMA. Regarding Premium LTE, there is no “premium” chip market separate from other mobile chips. What the FTC and Shapiro define as “premium” actually represents the end-result of a normal product evolution where newer, more innovative chips are incorporated first into higher-end devices. And even if one considers only Premium LTE chips, Qualcomm had a first-mover advantage because it invented the technology. A first-mover advantage is not an antitrust violation. The result of both flawed market definitions is an economic theoretical shell-game to divert attention from the fact that there is simply no evidence of harm to the properly defined actual market.[5]

And this leads to the second and even more critical point: the FTC presented no real-world evidence of harm to competitors or consumers from Qualcomm’s alleged exclusionary conduct. If R&D had been deterred by Qualcomm’s licensing practices, as Shapiro argued, he should have been able to identify at least one actual example.[6] Under his theory, the lack of ongoing R&D and harm to competitors should have resulted in an increasing number of inferior cell phones provided by a decreasing number of companies. To the contrary, more and more competitors have been entering the chip market with more and more innovations as cellular technology has advanced from 3G to 4G. Cell phone quality has dramatically increased over time, without concomitant quality-adjusted price increases.[7]

Notwithstanding the flawed market definition and lack of harm, the FTC has misconstrued the underlying basis for Qualcomm’s “no license, no chips” licensing policy, teeing it up as objectively anticompetitive and onerous. Yet, Qualcomm’s policy simply seeks to prevent “patent holdout” as a legitimate business strategy. Without this policy, device manufacturers could build phones using Qualcomm’s chips, then simply refuse to pay Qualcomm for its telecommunications patents. Qualcomm’s only recourse would be to sue for patent infringement, while the device manufacturers continue to profit from use of the chips. The “no-license, no chips” policy ensures that device manufacturers negotiate necessary patent licenses before receiving chips to build phones.

Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice, Makan Delrahim, has stated that condemning this kind of licensing practice, in isolation, as an antitrust violation, while ignoring equal incentives for patent holdout, “risks creating ‘false positive’ errors of over-enforcement that would discourage valuable innovation.” (Delrahim also recently criticized the FTC’s entire case saying that disputes about patent licensing should not be decided by antitrust law.)

The FTC, its experts, and its industry witnesses, however, are basically advocating for patent holdout as a legally legitimate, even preferable, strategy for dealing with patent owners like Qualcomm. Professor Shapiro’s model, in particular, advanced patent holdout in lieu of up-front patent licensing. Shapiro would require a patent owner to wait and then sue for infringement as a prerequisite to any license negotiations. But forcing the patent owner to pursue judicial recourse through a time-consuming and costly patent infringement suit leverages the cost of litigation to artificially decrease the ultimate reward to the patentee.

At the close of this case, one is left wondering why. Why did the FTC pursue a “midnight” filing at the tail end of the Obama Administration, just days before President Trump took office? Why did the FTC pursue the case over Commissioner Ohlhausen’s strong dissent in which she argued that the case was based on a flawed legal theory “that lacks economic and evidentiary support” and that “by its mere issuance, will undermine U.S. intellectual property rights in Asia and worldwide”? And finally, why is the FTC attempting to cripple Qualcomm in the developing 5G technological space in favor of China’s Huawei[8], which will result in actual, quantifiable harm to the U.S.’s competitive advantage over China?

[1] CDMA, which stands for “code-division multiple access,” permits several transmitters to send information over a single communication channel and is a second generation (2G) network used in mobile device.

[2] LTE, which stands for “long term evolution,” is a fourth generation (4G) standard for high-speed wireless communication used in mobile devices.

[3] FRAND stands for “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory.”

[4] WCDMA stands for “wide band code division multiple access.” It is a third generation (3G) network used in mobile devices.

[5] This is the same game the FTC played in the 1990s with Microsoft where the FTC defined the relevant market as operating systems for IBM compatible PCs, but that argument only worked if one excluded Apple, Linux, and other operating systems. These type of games about defining the relevant market are common in the high-tech context, and the FTC is repeating it here.

[7] “Several empirical studies demonstrate that the observed pattern in high-tech industries, especially in the smartphone industry, is one of constant lower quality-adjusted prices, increased entry and competition, and higher performance standards.” See: https://cip2.gmu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2018/02/Letter-to-DOJ-Supporting-Evidence-Based-Approach-to-Antitrust-Enforcement-of-IP.pdf.

[8] One also wonders why the FTC relied so heavily on Huawei’s testimony in this case given the Trump Administration’s repeated concerns about this company culminating in the Department of Justice’s recent 10-count indictment against Huawei for theft of trade secrets, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice.

Tags anticompetitive, Antitrust, Carl Shapiro, cellphone, Federal Trade Commission, FTC, Makan Delrahim, Maureen Ohlhausen, patent, patent holdout, patent holdup, President Obama, President Trump, Qualcomm, R&D, Vanessa Rollins

FTC Healthcare

CPIP Scholars Join Comments to FTC on How Antitrust Overreach is Threatening Healthcare Innovation

Post author By Joshua Grove
Post date January 9, 2019

dictionary entry for the word "innovate" On December 21, 2018, CPIP Senior Scholars Adam Mossoff and Kristen Osenga joined former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Randall Rader and SIU Law’s Mark Schultz in comments submitted to the FTC as part of its ongoing Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century Hearings. Through the hearings, the FTC is examining whether recent economic or technological changes warrant adjustments to competition or consumer protection laws. The comments submitted to the FTC explain how the FTC itself is harming innovation in the health sciences by meddling in patent disputes between branded and generic drug companies.

The introduction is copied below, and the comments can be downloaded here.

***

How Antitrust Overreach is Threatening Healthcare Innovation

Imagine passing a rigorous test with flying colors, only to be told that you need to start over because you weren’t wearing the right clothing or you wrote your answers in the wrong color. Does that sound silly? Unfair? That scenario is happening to the American pharmaceutical industry thanks to regulators at the Federal Trade Commission who aren’t content to let the Food & Drug Administration (the experts in pharmaceutical safety and regulation) and federal courts (which referee disputes between branded and generic drug companies) decide when new drugs are ready to come to market. The consequences of these regulatory actions impact people’s lives.

The development and widespread availability of safe and effective pharmaceutical products has helped people live longer and better lives. The pharmaceutical industry invests billions each year in research and infrastructure and employs millions of Americans. The industry is closely regulated by many agencies, most notably the FDA, which requires extensive testing for safety and effectiveness before new drugs enter the market. Many thoughtful proposals have been advanced to improve and modernize the FDA’s review and approval of new drugs, but there is broad agreement that the FDA’s basic role in drug approval serves valid ends.

In recent years, however, other government agencies have played an increasingly intrusive role in deciding whether and when new drugs can enter the market. One such agency is the Federal Trade Commission, which has recently taken steps to block branded drug companies from settling patent litigation with generic drug makers. The FTC substitutes its own judgment for the business judgment of sophisticated parties, simultaneously weakening the patent rights of branded drug companies that spend billions in drug discovery and development and delaying generic drug companies from bringing consumers low cost alternatives to branded drugs. This example of government agencies picking winners and losers—indeed, deciding there should be no winners and losers—harms consumers in the short run by slowing access to drugs and in the long run by weakening innovation.

This paper describes the role of patents in protecting drugs and the special patent litigation regime Congress enacted in the 1980s to carefully balance the needs of branded drug companies, generic competitors, and consumers. Although these systems are not perfect, the FTC’s overreach in its regulatory powers in this area of the innovation economy results in a net loss for American consumers, as described below.

To read the comments, please click here.

Tags Adam Mossoff, Antitrust, competition, drugs, healthcare, innovation, Kristen Osenga, Mark Schultz, pharma, pharmaceutical patents, Randall Rader

FTC Innovation

CPIP Scholars Join Comment Letter to FTC Supporting Evidence-Based Approach to IP Policymaking

Post author By Joshua Grove
Post date January 7, 2019

a hand reaching for a hanging, shining key On December 21, 2018, CPIP Senior Scholars Jonathan Barnett, Chris Holman, Erika Lietzan, Adam Mossoff, Sean O’Connor, and Kristen Osenga joined a comment letter that was filed with the FTC as part of its ongoing hearings on Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century. The comment letter was joined by 18 legal academics, economists, and former government officials—including former USPTO Director David Kappos and former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel. The comment letter is copied below.

***

December 21, 2018

Via Electronic Submission

Mr. Donald S. Clark
Secretary of the Commission
Federal Trade Commission
600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20580

Re: Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century Hearings—
Public Comments Following Hearing #4 on Innovation and Intellectual Property Policy

Dear Secretary Clark,

As legal academics, economists, and former government officials who are experts in antitrust law and intellectual property law, we respectfully submit these comments and an Appendix in response to the request for public comments following the Federal Trade Commission’s Hearings on Innovation and Intellectual Property Policy held October 23-24, 2018, as part of the FTC’s Hearings on Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century.

We support evidence-based policy-making by the FTC concerning all aspects of technological innovation, intellectual property (IP) rights, and the relationship between IP rights and innovation markets. It is imperative that the FTC ground any policy statements, investigations, or enforcement actions, not on academic theories about how IP rights might potentially be misused in stylized theoretical models, but on persuasive evidence of actual consumer harm from anti-competitive practices in real-world markets. Otherwise, regulatory overreach could undermine the economic incentives and resulting stream of innovative products and services that consumers enjoy in markets in which reliable and effective IP rights attract the private capital necessary to fund the high costs of R&D and the commercialization process.

Few economists and policymakers would question that reliable and effective property rights are a necessary predicate for supporting investment in conventional physical-goods markets. Logic holds that this economic principle applies for the innovators, investors, and entrepreneurs in the information technology and life sciences markets at the core of the US innovation economy.

Given reliable and effective IP rights, multiple empirical studies support the proposition that firms are more willing to incur substantial costs and bear significant risks in undertaking long-term R&D. Two well-known examples are the approximately $2.6 billion dollars required to bring a new drug to market or the billions in dollars required to develop new communications technologies like 5G. These and other long-term R&D investments occur in commercial environments in which courts and administrative agencies secure reliable and effective IP rights.

In recent years, antitrust agencies have sometimes taken policy actions in IP-intensive markets that overlook this fundamental connection between secure property rights, investment incentives, R&D, and commercialization activities. These regulatory actions have been based on academic theories and anecdotal reports that have not been put to thoroughgoing, rigorous empirical tests.

To illustrate the risks of making policy without firm empirical support, consider the smartphone industry. For over a decade, theoretical predictions have been made that comparatively high numbers of patents covering technologies used in a single multi-component consumer product—a smartphone—would create “patent thickets,” “royalty stacking,” and “patent holdup” that would increase prices, constrain output, and stunt innovation. Based on these conjectures, antitrust agencies around the world have issued policy statements, undertaken enforcement actions, and imposed billions of dollars in fines—often directed at the firms that had pioneered the fundamental technologies behind wireless communications. Yet those proposing this testable hypothesis never actually tested it. Empirical researchers who subsequently did so found little to no evidence of “patent holdup.” Contrary to theory, real-world market conditions in the smartphone industry are characterized by constant lower quality-adjusted prices, robust market entry by new producers, and continuously increasing performance standards. Consumers in the US and around the globe have benefited from the virtuous feedback effect between secure property rights in new technologies, strong investment flows, and robust R&D output. The evidentiary burden surely rests on those who propose taking policy actions that would erode the property-rights foundation behind this technological and economic success story.

The smartphone industry is just one of multiple innovation markets that exhibit a positive relationship between reliable and effective patent rights, increased innovation, and economic growth. This evidence demonstrates a close relationship in the biopharmaceutical, medical device and certain information technology markets between patent protection and startups’ ability to secure financing for R&D and to undertake the costly commercial task of translating R&D into new products and services for consumers. This relationship is especially powerful in the case of startups that are often the source of breakthrough innovation. One empirical study shows that a startup with a patent more than doubles its chances of obtaining venture capital funding compared to a startup without a patent. Without a secure IP portfolio, venture capital and other investors will decline to support startups that often have few other legal or commercial mechanisms by which to secure their products and services against imitation by larger incumbents. For similar reasons, larger firms that specialize in R&D but do not have downstream production and distribution capacities require a secure IP portfolio to support a licensing infrastructure that generates the returns necessary to fund continued R&D that ultimately benefits downstream companies in the value chain and end-users in the marketplace.

Antitrust policy has long followed an error-cost approach that takes into account the relative costs associated with overenforcement (false positive errors) and underenforcement (false negative errors) of the antitrust laws. Consistent with this approach, the FTC’s policymaking and enforcement actions in innovation markets should be based on valid empirical evidence that makes it possible to weigh the likely costs and benefits of the agency’s actions.

This concern is especially relevant in evaluating the likelihood of consumer harm and the impact on innovation from patent infringement litigation. Like any form of civil litigation, patent litigation can be used for either legitimate or opportunistic purposes. Based on a limited body of evidence that suffers from substantial methodological shortcomings, antitrust agencies have issued statements and taken actions supporting blanket denials of the availability of injunctive relief for all patent owners who primarily license their technologies (“non-practicing entities”).

A broader empirical literature has looked more closely with rigorous analysis and uncovered a far more nuanced market and legal reality. First, no empirical study has demonstrated that patent owners’ requests for injunctive relief after findings of defendants’ infringement of their property rights have resulted systematically either in consumer harm or in slowing down the pace of technological innovation. Second, researchers have found that the “non-practicing entities” or “patent assertion entities” rubric encompasses a large number of business models that generate social gains by providing licensing and other mechanisms for undercapitalized individual inventors, startups, small firms, and universities. These innovators lack the commercial means to extract revenue from R&D that can generate valuable new products and services for consumers. Painting all of these entities with the same rhetorical broad brush threatens to unravel a rich ecosystem of inventors, startups, and entrepreneurs that rely on the legal backstop of injunctive relief to support markets in intellectual assets. Abusive litigation practices by a limited number of patent owners could and should be targeted surgically through fee-shifting and other standard tools available in all civil litigation. Again, regulatory intervention without a firm evidentiary basis runs the risk of harming consumer welfare by undermining the reliable and effective patent rights on which innovators, venture capitalists, startups, and other market participants rely in creating and expanding the innovation markets that benefit everyone.

In support, we attach an Appendix of articles that provide rigorous empirical studies and evidence-based analyses of IP-driven innovation markets, patent licensing, and patent litigation.

In conclusion, the FTC should continue to develop policies and undertake enforcement actions only with evidence of proven harms to consumers and with proper consideration of the costs in undermining reliable and effective IP rights that have consumer-welfare enhancing effects in the US innovation economy. A balanced consideration of the evidence on both harms and benefits is necessary to ensure balanced protection of innovators and consumers. We are confident that a commitment by the FTC to a program of evidence-based policy-making will lead to a vibrant, dynamic innovation economy supported by a secure foundation of IP rights that will continue to benefit consumers in the US and around the world.

Sincerely,

Kristina M. L. Acri
Associate Professor of Economics
The Colorado College

Jonathan Barnett
Professor of Law
USC Gould School of Law

Andrew Beckerman-Rodau
Professor of Law
Suffolk University Law School

Ronald A. Cass
Dean Emeritus,
Boston University School of Law
Former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner,
United States International Trade Commission

The Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg
Senior Circuit Judge,
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and
Professor of Law,
Antonin Scalia Law School
George Mason University

Stephen Haber
A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor
Stanford University

Christopher M. Holman
Professor of Law
UKMC School of Law

Keith N. Hylton
William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor
Boston University School of Law

David J. Kappos
Former Under Secretary of Commerce and Director
United States Patent & Trademark Office

Erika Lietzan
Associate Professor of Law
University of Missouri School of Law

The Honorable Paul Michel
Chief Judge (Ret.),
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

Damon C. Matteo
Course Professor
Tsinghua University in Beijing

Adam Mossoff
Professor of Law
Antonin Scalia Law School
George Mason University

Sean M. O’Connor
Boeing International Professor of Law
University of Washington School of Law

Kristen Osenga
Professor of Law
University of Richmond School of Law

Matthew L. Spitzer
Howard and Elizabeth Chapman Professor of Law
Northwestern University School of Law

Saurabh Vishnubhakat
Associate Professor of Law
Texas A&M University School of Law

Joshua D. Wright
University Professor,
Antonin Scalia Law School
George Mason University
Former Commissioner,
Federal Trade Commission

APPENDIX

Kristina M. L. Acri, née Lybecker, Economic Growth and Prosperity Stem from Effective Intellectual Property Rights, 24 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 865 (2017), http://georgemasonlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/24_4_Lybecker.pdf

Ashish Arora & Robert P. Merges, Specialized Supply Firms, Property Rights and Firm Boundaries, 14 Ind. & Corp. Change 451 (2005)

Jonathan H. Ashtor, Does Patented Information Promote Progress? (June 22, 2017), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2857697

Jonathan H. Ashtor, Opening Pandora’s Box: Analyzing the Complexity of U.S. Patent Litigation, 18 Yale J. L. & Tech. 217 (2016), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2736556

Jonathan M. Barnett, Antitrust Overreach: Undoing Cooperative Standardization in the Digital Economy (Nov. 2018), https://ssrn.com/abstract=3277667

Jonathan M. Barnett, Has the Academy Led Patent Law Astray?, 32 Berk. Tech. L. J. 1313 (2017), http://btlj.org/data/articles2017/vol32/32_4/Barnett_web.pdf

Jonathan M. Barnett, From Patent Thickets to Patent Networks: The Legal Infrastructure of the Digital Economy, 55 Jurimetrics J. 1 (2014), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2431917

Jonathan M. Barnett, Three Quasi-Fallacies in the Conventional Understanding of Intellectual Property, 12 Journal of Law, Econ. and Pol. 1 (2016), https://ssrn.com/abstract=265636

Christopher A. Cotropia, Jay P. Kesan & David L. Schwartz, Unpacking Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs), 99 Minn. L. Rev. 649 (2014), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2346381

Richard Epstein, F. Scott Kieff & Daniel F. Spulber, The FTC, IP, and SSOs: Government Hold-Up Replacing Private Coordination, 8 J. Comp. L. & Econ. 1 (2012), https://ssrn.com/abstract=1907450

Richard A. Epstein & Kayvan Noroozi, Why Incentives for Patent Hold Out Threaten to Dismantle FRAND and Why It Matters, 32 Berkeley Tech. L. J. (2018), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2913105

Joan Farre-Mensa, Deepak Hegde, & Alexander Ljungqvist, What Is a Patent Worth? Evidence from the U.S. Patent ‘Lottery’ (USPTO Econ. Working Paper No. 2015-5, Mar. 2017), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2704028

Alexander Galetovic & Stephen Haber, The Fallacies of Patent Holdup Theory, 13 J. Comp. L. & Econ. 1 (2017), https://academic.oup.com/jcle/article/13/1/1/3060409

Alexander Galetovic, Stephen Haber, & Lew Zaretzki, An Estimate of the Average Cumulative Royalty Yield in the World Mobile Phone Industry: Theory, Measurement and Results (Feb. 7, 2018), https://hooverip2.org/working-paper/wp18005

Alexander Galetovic, Stephen Haber, & Ross Levine, An Empirical Examination of Patent Hold Up, 11 J. Comp. L. & Econ. 549 (2015), https://academic.oup.com/jcle/article/11/3/549/800066

Douglas H. Ginsburg, Koren W. Wong-Ervin, & Joshua Wright, The Troubling Use of Antitrust to Regulate FRAND Licensing, CPI Antitrust Chronicle (Oct. 2015), https://www.competitionpolicyinternational.com/assets/Uploads/GinsburgetalOct-151.pdf

Douglas H. Ginsburg, Taylor M. Ownings, & Joshua D. Wright, Enjoining Injunctions: The Case Against Antitrust Liability for Standard Essential Patent Holders Who Seek Injunctions, The Antitrust Source (Oct. 2014), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2515949

Stuart J.H. Graham & Ted Sichelman, Why Do Start-Ups Patent?, 23 Berk. Tech. L. J. 1063 (2008), https://ssrn.com/abstract=1121224

Stuart J.H. Graham & Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Of Smart Phone Wars and Software Patents, 27 J. Econ. Persp. 67 (2013), http://ssrn.com/abstract=2291603

Kirti Gupta, Technology Standards and Competition in the Mobile Wireless Industry, 22 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 865 (2015), http://www.georgemasonlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/GuptaTechStandards.pdf

Stephen Haber, Patents and the Wealth of Nations, 23 George Mason L. Rev. 811 (2016), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2776773

Christopher M. Holman, The Critical Role of Patents in the Development, Commercialization and Utilization of Innovative Genetic Diagnostic Tests and Personalized Medicine, 21 B.U. J. Sci. & Tech. L. 297 (2015), http://www.bu.edu/jostl/files/2015/12/HOLMAN_ART_FINALweb.pdf

Ryan T. Holte, Trolls or Great Inventors: Case Studies of Patent Assertion Entities, 59 St. Louis U. L.J. 1 (2014), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2426444

Albert G.Z. Hu and I.P.L. Png, Patent Rights and Economic Growth: Evidence from Cross-Country Panels of Manufacturing Industries, 65 Oxford Econ. Papers 675 (2013), https://academic.oup.com/oep/article-abstract/65/3/675/2362113

Keith N. Hylton, Patent Uncertainty: Toward a Framework with Applications, 96 B.U. L. Rev. 1117 (2016), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2714434

Zorina Khan, Trolls and Other Patent Inventions: Economic History and the Patent Controversy in the Twenty-First Century, 21 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 825 (2014), http://www.georgemasonlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Khan-WebsiteVersion.pdf

Scott Kieff & Anne Layne-Farrar, Incentive Effects from Different Approaches to Holdup Mitigation Surrounding Patent Remedies and Standard-Setting Organizations, 9 J. Comp. L. & Econ. 1091 (2013), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274522003_Incentive_effects_from_different_approaches_to_holdup_mitigation_surrounding_patent_remedies_and_standard-setting_organizations

Bruce H. Koboyashi & Joshua D. Wright, Federalism, Substantive Preemption, and Limits on Antitrust: An Application to Patent Holdup, 5 J. Comp. L. & Econ. 1 (2009), https://ssrn.com/abstract=1143602

Bruce H. Koboyashi & Joshua D. Wright, The Limits of Antitrust and Patent Holdup: A Reply to Cary et al., 78 Antitrust L.J. 505 (2012), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2704591

Anne Layne-Farrar, Why Patent Holdout is Not Just a Fancy Name for Plain Old Patent Infringement, CPI North American Column (Feb. 2016), https://www.competitionpolicyinternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/NorthAmerica-Column-February-Full.pdf

Anne Layne-Farrar, Patent Holdup and Royalty Stacking Theory and Evidence: Where Do We Stand After 15 Years of History?, OECD Intellectual Property and Standard Setting (Nov. 18, 2014), http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=DAF/COMP/WD%282014%2984&doclanguage=en

Anne Layne-Farrar, Moving Past the SEP RAND Obsession: Some Thoughts on the Economic Implications of Unilateral Commitments and the Complexities of Patent Licensing, 21 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 1093 (2014), http://www.georgemasonlawreview.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/06/Layne-Farrar-Website-Version.pdf

Gerard Llobet & Jorge Padilla, The Optimal Scope of the Royalty Base in Patent Licensing, 59 J. L. & Econ. 45 (2016), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2417216

Alan C. Marco & Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Certain Patents, 16 Yale J.L. & Tech. 103 (2013), http://ssrn.com/abstract=2324538

Kevin R. Madigan & Adam Mossoff, Turning Gold to Lead: How Patent Eligibility Doctrine is Undermining U.S. Leadership in Innovation, 24 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 939 (2017), http://georgemasonlawreview.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/11/24_4_Madigan_Mossoff_2.pdf

Keith Mallinson, Don’t Fix What Isn’t Broken: The Extraordinary Record of Innovation and Success in the Cellular Industry under Existing Licensing Practices, 23 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 967 (2016), http://www.georgemasonlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/Mallinson-FINAL.pdf

Keith Mallinson, Theories of Harm with SEP Licensing Do Not Stack Up, IP Fin. Blog (May 24, 2013), http://www.ip.finance/2013/05/theories-of-harm-with-sep-licensing-do.html

Ronald J. Mann, Do Patents Facilitate Financing in the Software Industry?, 83 Tex. L. Rev. 961 (2005), https://ssrn.com/abstract=510103

Jorge Padilla & Koren W. Wong-Ervin, Portfolio Licensing to Makers of Downstream End-User Devices: Analyzing Refusals to License FRAND-Assured Standard-Essential Patents at the Component Level, 62 The Antitrust Bulletin 494 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1177/0003603X17719762

Kristen Osenga, Formerly Manufacturing Entities: Piercing the “Patent Troll” Rhetoric, 47 Conn. L. Rev. 435 (2014), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2476556

Kristen Osenga, Ignorance Over Innovation: Why Misunderstanding Standard Setting Operations Will Hinder Technological Progress, 56 U. Louisville L. Rev. 159 (2018). https://scholarship.richmond.edu/law-faculty-publications/1502/

Kristen Osenga, Sticks and Stones: How the FTC’s Name-Calling Misses the Complexity of Licensing-Based Business Models, 22 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 1001 (2015), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2834140

Jonathan D. Putnam & Tim A. Williams, The Smallest Salable Patent-Practicing Unit (SSPPU): Theory and Evidence (Sept. 2016), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2835617

David L. Schwartz & Jay P. Kesan, Analyzing the Role of Non-Practicing Entities in the Patent System, 99 Cornell L. Rev. 425 (2014), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2117421

Gregory Sidak, What Aggregate Royalty Do Manufacturers of Mobile Phones Pay to License Standard-Essential Patents?, 1 Criterion J. Innovation 701 (2016), https://www.criterioninnovation.com/articles/sidak-aggregate-royalty-to-license-standard-essential-patents.pdf

Gregory Sidak, The Antitrust Division’s Devaluation of Standard-Essential Patents, 104 Geo. L.J. Online 48 (2015), https://georgetownlawjournal.org/articles/161/antitrust-division-sdevaluation-of/pdf

Gregory Sidak, Testing for Bias to Suppress Royalties for Standard-Essential Patents, 1 Criterion J. on Innovation 301 (2016), https://www.criterioninnovation.com/articles/sidak-bias-to-suppress-sep-royalties.pdf

Matthew Spitzer, Patent Trolls, Nuisance Suits, and the Federal Trade Commission, 20 N.C. J.L. & Tech. 75 (2018), https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/ncjolt/vol20/iss1/2

Daniel F. Spulber, Standard Setting Organizations and Standard Essential Patents: Voting and Markets, Econ. J. (2018), https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12606

Daniel F. Spulber, Patent Licensing and Bargaining with Innovative Complements and Substitutes (June 2018), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2818008

Daniel F. Spulber, How Patents Provide the Foundation of the Market for Inventions, 11 J. Comp. L. & Econ. 271 (2015), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2487564

David J. Teece, Competing Through Innovation: Technology Strategy and Antitrust Policies (Edward Elgar, 2013), https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/competing-through-innovation

David J. Teece, Edward F. Sherry, & Peter Grindley, Patents and ‘Patent Wars’ in Wireless Communications: An Economic Assessment, 95 Comm. & Strat. 85 (2014), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2603751

David J. Teece & Edward F. Sherry, On Patent ‘Monopolies’: An Economic Re-Appraisal, CPI Antitrust Chronicle (Apr. 2017), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2962208

Joanna Tsai & Joshua D. Wright, Standard Setting, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Role of Antitrust in Regulating Incomplete Contracts, 80 Antitrust L.J. 157 (2015), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2467939

Gregory J. Werden & Luke M. Froeb, Why Patent Hold-Up Does Not Violate Antitrust Law (Sep. 24, 2018), https://ssrn.com/abstract=3244425

Joshua D. Wright, SSOs, FRAND, and Antitrust: Lessons from the Economics of Incomplete Contracts, 21 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 791 (2014), http://www.georgemasonlawreview.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/06/Wright-Website-Version.pdf

Ziedonis, Rosemarie H. and Bronwyn H. Hall, The Effects of Strengthening Patent Rights on Firms Engaged in Cumulative Innovation: Insights from the Semiconductor Industry, in Gary D. Libecap (ed.), Entrepreneurial Inputs and Outcomes: New Studies of Entrepreneurship in the United States (2001).

Tags Adam Mossoff, Chris Holman, David Kappos, Erika Lietzan, Federal Trade Commission, FTC, Jonathan Barnett, Kristen Osenga, Paul Michel, Sean O'Connor

FTC Patent Law Uncategorized

FTC’s PAE Study Makes Unsupported Recommendations

Post author By Joshua Grove
Post date October 6, 2016

The FTC released its long-awaited study of so-called patent assertion entities, or PAEs, today. As many predicted, the FTC makes several broad recommendations for substantive and procedural reforms. The problem with this, however, is that the study was not designed to reveal the sort of data that could support such policy recommendations.

The FTC itself even admitted this. When seeking approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to go ahead with the study, the FTC explained that its findings “will not be generalizable to the universe of all PAE activity.” In another submission to the OMB, the FTC acknowledged that “the case study should be viewed as descriptive and probative for future studies seeking to explore the relationships between organizational form and assertion behavior.” Now that the study is out, we see that the FTC has neglected to recognize the very limitations it once acknowledged to exist.

The simple fact is that the PAE study is just the first step down the long road to understanding the complicated world of PAEs. While the study’s results reveal some information about a handful of firms, they don’t—because they can’t—tell us how PAE activity affects competition and innovation in general. The sample size is too small, and the questions are too open-ended, to have any predictive power.

It’s clear that many had already jumped the gun, claiming both that we need this study to understand PAEs but that we know enough about PAEs to condemn them. They were going to use this study to argue for broad reforms no matter what it said. And now that the study is out, itself suggesting many fundamental changes, the anti-patent crowd has more fuel for the anti-inventor bonfire. That the study does not support its conclusions matters a great deal, and it’s disappointing that the FTC would use an exploratory study designed to simply suggest hypotheses to claim that those hypotheses have now been fully tested.

To better understand the limitations of the FTC’s study, here are some recommended readings:

Papers

Anne Layne-Farrar, What Can the FTC’s §6(B) PAE Study Teach Us? A Practical Review of the Study’s Methodology
Kristen Osenga, Sticks and Stones: How the FTC’s Name-Calling Misses the Complexity of Licensing-Based Business Models
Fritz Scheuren, Statistics and the Paperwork Reduction Act: An FTC Case Study

Essays

Devlin Hartline, Acknowledging the Limitations of the FTC’s PAE Study
Devlin Hartline, How Rhetorical Epithets Have Led the FTC Astray in its Study of Patent Licensing Firms
Anne Layne-Farrar, What Can the FTC’s PAE Study Teach Us?
Kristen Osenga, Why the FTC Study on PAEs is Destined to Produce Incomplete and Inaccurate Results
Fritz Scheuren, What Can We Learn From the FTC’s Patent Assertion Entity Study?

Tags Anne Layne-Farrar, Devlin Hartline, Fritz Scheruen, FTC, Kristen Osenga, PAE Study, patent assertion entity

Administrative Agency Economic Study FTC Innovation Inventors Law and Economics Legislation Uncategorized

Acknowledging the Limitations of the FTC’s PAE Study

Post author By Joshua Grove
Post date April 25, 2016

The FTC’s long-awaited case study of patent assertion entities (PAEs) is expected to be released this spring. Using its subpoena power under Section 6(b) to gather information from a handful of firms, the study promises us a glimpse at their inner workings. But while the results may be interesting, they’ll also be too narrow to support any informed policy changes. And you don’t have to take my word for it—the FTC admits as much. In one submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which ultimately decided whether the study should move forward, the FTC acknowledges that its findings “will not be generalizable to the universe of all PAE activity.” In another submission to the OMB, the FTC recognizes that “the case study should be viewed as descriptive and probative for future studies seeking to explore the relationships between organizational form and assertion behavior.”

However, this doesn’t mean that no one will use the study to advocate for drastic changes to the patent system. Even before the study’s release, many people—including some FTC Commissioners themselves—have already jumped to conclusions when it comes to PAEs, arguing that they are a drag on innovation and competition. Yet these same people say that we need this study because there’s no good empirical data analyzing the systemic costs and benefits of PAEs. They can’t have it both ways. The uproar about PAEs is emblematic of the broader movement that advocates for the next big change to the patent system before we’ve even seen how the last one panned out. In this environment, it’s unlikely that the FTC and other critics will responsibly acknowledge that the study simply cannot give us an accurate assessment of the bigger picture.

Limitations of the FTC Study

Many scholars have written about the study’s fundamental limitations. As statistician Fritz Scheuren points out, there are two kinds of studies: exploratory and confirmatory. An exploratory study is a starting point that asks general questions in order to generate testable hypotheses, while a confirmatory study is then used to test the validity of those hypotheses. The FTC study, with its open-ended questions to a handful of firms, is a classic exploratory study. At best, the study will generate answers that could help researchers begin to form theories and design another round of questions for further research. Scheuren notes that while the “FTC study may well be useful at generating exploratory data with respect to PAE activity,” it “is not designed to confirm supportable subject matter conclusions.”

One significant constraint with the FTC study is that the sample size is small—only twenty-five PAEs—and the control group is even smaller—a mixture of fifteen manufacturers and non-practicing entities (NPEs) in the wireless chipset industry. Scheuren reasons that there “is also the risk of non-representative sampling and potential selection bias due to the fact that the universe of PAEs is largely unknown and likely quite diverse.” And the fact that the control group comes from one narrow industry further prevents any generalization of the results. Scheuren concludes that the FTC study “may result in potentially valuable information worthy of further study,” but that it is “not designed in a way as to support public policy decisions.”

Professor Michael Risch questions the FTC’s entire approach: “If the FTC is going to the trouble of doing a study, why not get it done right the first time and a) sample a larger number of manufacturers, in b) a more diverse area of manufacturing, and c) get identical information?” He points out that the FTC won’t be well-positioned to draw conclusions because the control group is not even being asked the same questions as the PAEs. Risch concludes that “any report risks looking like so many others: a static look at an industry with no benchmark to compare it to.” Professor Kristen Osenga echoes these same sentiments and notes that “the study has been shaped in a way that will simply add fuel to the anti–‘patent troll’ fire without providing any data that would explain the best way to fix the real problems in the patent field today.”

Osenga further argues that the study is flawed since the FTC’s definition of PAEs perpetuates the myth that patent licensing firms are all the same. The reality is that many different types of businesses fall under the “PAE” umbrella, and it makes no sense to impute the actions of a small subset to the entire group when making policy recommendations. Moreover, Osenga questions the FTC’s “shortsighted viewpoint” of the potential benefits of PAEs, and she doubts how the “impact on innovation and competition” will be ascertainable given the questions being asked. Anne Layne-Farrar expresses similar doubts about the conclusions that can be drawn from the FTC study since only licensors are being surveyed. She posits that it “cannot generate a full dataset for understanding the conduct of the parties in patent license negotiation or the reasons for the failure of negotiations.”

Layne-Farrar concludes that the FTC study “can point us in fruitful directions for further inquiry and may offer context for interpreting quantitative studies of PAE litigation, but should not be used to justify any policy changes.” Consistent with the FTC’s own admissions of the study’s limitations, this is the real bottom line of what we should expect. The study will have no predictive power because it only looks at how a small sample of firms affect a few other players within the patent ecosystem. It does not quantify how that activity ultimately affects innovation and competition—the very information needed to support policy recommendations. The FTC study is not intended to produce the sort of compelling statistical data that can be extrapolated to the larger universe of firms.

FTC Commissioners Put Cart Before Horse

The FTC has a history of bias against PAEs, as demonstrated in its 2011 report that skeptically questioned the “uncertain benefits” of PAEs while assuming their “detrimental effects” in undermining innovation. That report recommended special remedy rules for PAEs, even as the FTC acknowledged the lack of objective evidence of systemic failure and the difficulty of distinguishing “patent transactions that harm innovation from those that promote it.” With its new study, the FTC concedes to the OMB that much is still not known about PAEs and that the findings will be preliminary and non-generalizable. However, this hasn’t prevented some Commissioners from putting the cart before the horse with PAEs.

In fact, the very call for the FTC to institute the PAE study started with its conclusion. In her 2013 speech suggesting the study, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez recognized that “we still have only snapshots of the costs and benefits of PAE activity” and that “we will need to learn a lot more” in order “to see the full competitive picture.” While acknowledging the vast potential benefits of PAEs in rewarding invention, benefiting competition and consumers, reducing enforcement hurdles, increasing liquidity, encouraging venture capital investment, and funding R&D, she nevertheless concluded that “PAEs exploit underlying problems in the patent system to the detriment of innovation and consumers.” And despite the admitted lack of data, Ramirez stressed “the critical importance of continuing the effort on patent reform to limit the costs associated with some types of PAE activity.”

This position is duplicitous: If the costs and benefits of PAEs are still unknown, what justifies Ramirez’s rushed call for immediate action? While benefits have to be weighed against costs, it’s clear that she’s already jumped to the conclusion that the costs outweigh the benefits. In another speech a few months later, Ramirez noted that the “troubling stories” about PAEs “don’t tell us much about the competitive costs and benefits of PAE activity.” Despite this admission, Ramirez called for “a much broader response to flaws in the patent system that fuel inefficient behavior by PAEs.” And while Ramirez said that understanding “the PAE business model will inform the policy dialogue,” she stated that “it will not change the pressing need for additional progress on patent reform.”

Likewise, in an early 2014 speech, Commissioner Julie Brill ignored the study’s inherent limitations and exploratory nature. She predicted that the study “will provide a fuller and more accurate picture of PAE activity” that “will be put to good use by Congress and others who examine closely the activities of PAEs.” Remarkably, Brill stated that “the FTC and other law enforcement agencies” should not “wait on the results of the 6(b) study before undertaking enforcement actions against PAE activity that crosses the line.” Even without the study’s results, she thought that “reforms to the patent system are clearly warranted.” In Brill’s view, the study would only be useful for determining whether “additional reforms are warranted” to curb the activities of PAEs.

It appears that these Commissioners have already decided—in the absence of any reliable data on the systemic effects of PAE activity—that drastic changes to the patent system are necessary. Given their clear bias in this area, there is little hope that they will acknowledge the deep limitations of the study once it is released.

Commentators Jump the Gun

Unsurprisingly, many supporters of the study have filed comments with the FTC arguing that the study is needed to fill the huge void in empirical data on the costs and benefits associated with PAEs. Some even simultaneously argue that the costs of PAEs far outweigh the benefits, suggesting that they have already jumped to their conclusion and just want the data to back it up. Despite the study’s serious limitations, these commentators appear primed to use it to justify their foregone policy recommendations.

For example, the Consumer Electronics Association applauded “the FTC’s efforts to assess the anticompetitive harms that PAEs cause on our economy as a whole,” and it argued that the study “will illuminate the many dimensions of PAEs’ conduct in a way that no other entity is capable.” At the same time, it stated that “completion of this FTC study should not stay or halt other actions by the administrative, legislative or judicial branches to address this serious issue.” The Internet Commerce Coalition stressed the importance of the study of “PAE activity in order to shed light on its effects on competition and innovation,” and it admitted that without the information, “the debate in this area cannot be empirically based.” Nonetheless, it presupposed that the study will uncover “hidden conduct of and abuses by PAEs” and that “it will still be important to reform the law in this area.”

Engine Advocacy admitted that “there is very little broad empirical data about the structure and conduct of patent assertion entities, and their effect on the economy.” It then argued that PAE activity “harms innovators, consumers, startups and the broader economy.” The Coalition for Patent Fairness called on the study “to contribute to the understanding of policymakers and the public” concerning PAEs, which it claimed “impose enormous costs on U.S. innovators, manufacturers, service providers, and, increasingly, consumers and end-users.” And to those suggesting “the potentially beneficial role of PAEs in the patent market,” it stressed that “reform be guided by the principle that the patent system is intended to incentivize and reward innovation,” not “rent-seeking” PAEs that are “exploiting problems.”

The joint comments of Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, & Engine Advocacy emphasized the fact that information about PAEs “currently remains limited” and that what is “publicly known largely consists of lawsuits filed in court and anecdotal information.” Despite admitting that “broad empirical data often remains lacking,” the groups also suggested that the study “does not mean that legislative efforts should be stalled” since “the harms of PAE activity are well known and already amenable to legislative reform.” In fact, they contended not only that “a problem exists,” but that there’s even “reason to believe the scope is even larger than what has already been reported.”

Given this pervasive and unfounded bias against PAEs, there’s little hope that these and other critics will acknowledge the study’s serious limitations. Instead, it’s far more likely that they will point to the study as concrete evidence that even more sweeping changes to the patent system are in order.

Conclusion

While the FTC study may generate interesting information about a handful of firms, it won’t tell us much about how PAEs affect competition and innovation in general. The study is simply not designed to do this. It instead is a fact-finding mission, the results of which could guide future missions. Such empirical research can be valuable, but it’s very important to recognize the limited utility of the information being collected. And it’s crucial not to draw policy conclusions from it. Unfortunately, if the comments of some of the Commissioners and supporters of the study are any indication, many critics have already made up their minds about the net effects of PAEs, and they will likely use the study to perpetuate the biased anti-patent fervor that has captured so much attention in recent years.

Tags Anne Layne-Farrar, broken patent system, competition, Edith Ramirez, Federal Trade Commissiion, Fritz Scheruen, FTC, innovation, Julie Brill, Kristen Osenga, Michael Risch, Office of Management and Budget, OMB, PAE Study, patent assertion entity, Section 6(b)

Administrative Agency Antitrust Commercialization Economic Study FTC Innovation Inventors Legislation Patent Law Patent Licensing Patent Litigation Uncategorized

How Rhetorical Epithets Have Led the FTC Astray in its Study of Patent Licensing Firms

Post author By Joshua Grove
Post date July 6, 2015

We’ve all heard the narrative about patent licensing firms, often referred to pejoratively as “patent trolls.” These patent owners, who choose to license their innovations rather than build them, are the supposed poster-children of a “broken” patent system. It’s as if commercializing one’s property, just like a landlord leases his land for another to use, is suddenly a bad thing. Nevertheless, the power of this “troll” rhetoric cannot be denied. Many provisions in 2011’s Leahy-Smith America Invents Act were aimed at starving out these “trolls,” and no less than five bills currently under consideration in the House and Senate seek to further deflate their sails.

Another example of the powerful appeal of the “patent troll” rhetoric is that the agencies charged with enforcing antitrust law have also been convinced that there is something amiss with the commercial licensing of patented innovation in the marketplace. This has been a key feature of the deployment of patented inventions in America’s innovation economy since the early nineteenth century, as scholars have shown. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) instigated its own investigative study of what it calls “patent assertion entities” (PAEs), which is merely a more formal and neutral-sounding synonym for the popularized “patent troll” epithet.

In a new paper published in the George Mason Law Review, Sticks and Stones: How the FTC’s Name-Calling Misses the Complexity of Licensing-Based Business Models, CPIP Senior Scholar Kristen Osenga takes a closer look at the FTC’s ongoing study of PAEs and finds that it is destined to fail for two simple, yet inescapably obvious, reasons.

The first is the basic definitional problem of the FTC’s characterization of PAEs, which puts all patent licensing firms in the same boat. Failing to take a more nuanced approach, Osenga warns, “fires up the rhetoric but obscures thoughtful discussion and debate about the issue.” Building upon her previous work, she explains:

[T]he real problem is that patent licensing firms are treated as a homogenous category, with no attention paid to the wide range of business models that exist under the patent licensing firm umbrella. The categorical determination of patent licensing firms as “problems” imputes to a large, diverse group of firms the negative actions and qualities of a small number of bad actors.

Since not all “trolls” are alike, Osenga cautions, it’s “naïve and inaccurate” to lump them all together. And when the FTC makes this mistake, it leads to a situation “where words actually can hurt, much more so than sticks and stones.” The FTC’s study is explicitly “premised on a one-size-fits-all conception of patent licensing firms.” Rather than shedding much-needed light on the complex innovation ecosystem, the study promises to squander the opportunity by failing to recognize that not all “trolls” are the same.

Osenga notes that the FTC is uniquely situated to obtain nonpublic information about how these patent licensing firms operate using its investigative power under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act. Unfortunately, however, the study is premised on the faulty notion that the only upside of patenting licensing firms is to “compensate inventors.” But this focus on patents-as-incentives misses the forest for the trees, Osenga urges, as it fails to account for the larger patent-commercialization network:

[T]here are many steps between invention and the introduction of an actual product to the market and consumers. These steps include transforming an idea in to a marketable embodiment, developing facilities to produce the marketable embodiment, creating distribution channels to bring the embodiment to the consumer, and making the consumer aware of the new product. Each of these steps requires its own additional resources in the form of both capital and labor.

The FTC study, like many patent skeptics, fails to consider the benefits of the division of labor that patent licensing firms represent. Not every inventor is willing or able to bring an invention to the marketplace. Osenga’s point is that patent licensing does more than simply compensate inventors for their troubles; it creates liquid markets and solves problems of asymmetrical actors and information. These exchanges increase innovation and competition by playing the role of match-maker and market-maker, and they place valuable patents into the hands of those who are better positioned to exploit their worth.

Osenga points out that there are indeed possible negative effects with patent licensing firms. For example, they sometimes engage in ex post licensing, waiting to offer licenses until after the would-be licensee has already adopted the technology. These firms can be better positioned litigation-wise since their potential exposure is typically less than that of the infringers they sue. Finally, patent aggregators tend to have greater market power, and it can be difficult to judge the quality of any given patent that’s asserted when they offer to license their entire portfolio.

As with all things, Osenga stresses, there’s both good and bad. The problem is figuring out which is greater. The FTC could conduct a study that reveals a “detailed understanding of the complex world of patent licensing firms,” she laments, but that’s not what the FTC is doing:

[T]he configuration of the study is slanted in such a way that only part of the story will be uncovered. Worse still, the study has been shaped in a way that will simply add fuel to the anti-“patent troll” fire without providing any data that would explain the best way to fix the real problems in the patent field today.

This leads to the second problem with the FTC study, which follows as a necessary, logical consequence from the first definitional problem: There are serious methodological problems with the study that will undermine any possible empirical conclusions that the FTC may wish to draw.

Osenga says that the FTC’s study is simply not asking the right questions. Painting a complete picture of complex licensing schemes requires more than just counting the number of patents a firm has and adding up the attempts to negotiate license deals. To really get to the bottom of things, she contends, the FTC should be asking why patentees sell their patents to licensing firms and why licensing firms buy them from patentees. Better still, ask them why they decided to become patent licensing firms in the first place.

This insight is powerful stuff. It’s not enough to simply ask these firms what they’re doing; to really understand them, the FTC must ask them why they’re doing it. And the results are likely to be varied:

Some, of course, begin with this business model in mind. Others invent new technology but are unable to successfully commercialize it themselves, despite making efforts to do so. Still others exist as practicing entities for years or decades before something changes—supply change issues, rampant infringement by competitors, and regulatory initiatives—and they are no longer able to exist as a viable practicing entity.

Similarly, the FTC could ask them what kind of firms they are, and these answers are also likely to be diverse. Osenga’s point is that the FTC’s questions aren’t designed to showcase the vast differences between the various types of patent licensing firms. If the FTC wants to get to the bottom of how these firms affect innovation and competition, the first step should be to realize that they’re not all the same. The FTC’s study is as clumsy as those who refer to all such firms as “patent trolls,” and the lack of nuance going in will unfortunately produce a study that lacks nuance coming out.

In the end, Osenga agrees that deterring abusive behavior is a good thing, and she worries about innovation and competition. However, unlike many in patent policy debates, she is also concerned that the rhetoric is having an undue influence on policymakers. Throwing all patent licensing firms under the “patent troll” bus will not get us the narrowly-tailored reforms that we need. Sadly, the FTC’s approach with its ongoing study appears to have swallowed this rhetoric wholesale, and it seems unlikely that the results will be anything but more fuel for the “patent troll” pyre.

Tags "patent trolls", America Invents Act, competition, FTC, FTC Act, innovation, Kristen Osenga, pae, patent licensing firm

Antitrust Commercialization DOJ FTC High Tech Industry Injunctions Innovation Intellectual Property Theory International Law Patent Law Patent Licensing Patent Theory Reasonable Royalty Remedies Software Patent Uncategorized

Curbing the Abuses of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law: An Indictment and Reform Agenda

Post author By Joshua Grove
Post date December 1, 2014

The following is taken from a CPIP policy brief by Professor Richard A. Epstein. A PDF of the full policy brief is available here.

Curbing the Abuses of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law:
An Indictment and Reform Agenda

Executive Summary

There are increasing complaints in both the European Union and the United States about a systematic bias in China’s enforcement of its Anti-Monopoly Law (AML). In an extensive report on China’s abuse of its antitrust laws in advancing its own domestic economic policies, for instance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce noted among many examples a recent action against Microsoft in which Chinese antitrust authorities used a “speculative possibility of licensor hold-up” following Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia to justify a decree under the AML to “cap license fees for domestic licensees of mobile handset-related software.”

Although the biases in the enforcement of the AML against foreign companies are rooted in systemic problems in China’s political and legal institutions, the abuses are particularly evident in the patent space. FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright has recognized the “growing concern about some antitrust regimes around the world using antitrust laws to further nationalistic goals at the expense of [intellectual property rights] holders, among others.” He specifically mentioned China as one such antitrust regime that may be finding encouragement or at least rationalization in recent FTC and DOJ actions that presume that “special rules for IP are desirable . . . and that business arrangements involving IP rights may be safely presumed to be anticompetitive without rigorous economic analysis and proof of competitive harm.”

This same theme has been recently echoed by FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen, who explained that recent American decisions on standard essential patents (SEP), such as the FTC’s use of its merger review power to enforce settlement agreements on SEPs against Bosch and Google, have “created potentially confusing precedent for foreign enforcers.” This concern was brought home to her when she witnessed Chinese officials invoke these recent FTC actions against Bosch and Google to justify their per se claim under the AML that “an ‘unreasonable’ refusal to grant a license for a standard essential patent to a competitor should constitute monopolization under the essential facilities doctrine.”

Such broad propositions pave the way for Chinese officials to favor domestic, state-run companies who incorporate foreign patented innovation in their own domestic products and services. These unfettered notions of “unreasonable” conduct become weapons that let Chinese officials force down prices of foreign goods to promote their own nationalist economic policies. Unfortunately, as Commissioner Ohlhausen observed just this past September, recent U.S. antitrust enforcement actions are giving Chinese officials grist for their industrial policy mill.

It is critical that American legal authorities do not give aid and comfort to China’s discriminatory treatment of foreign companies under the AML by the way in which American regulators either speak about or take action on SEPs or other issues relating to patented innovation in this country. The antitrust laws should not be applied so as to single out patents or any other intellectual property rights for special treatment; all property deployed in the marketplace should be treated equally under the competition laws.

The unfortunate situation in China is one example of a dangerous set of practices which could spread to other countries, motivated either by imitating what China has done or retaliating against its abuses. The risk is that the disease can spread all too easily. Until reforms are implemented in both the substance of the AML and the enforcement practices of the Chinese authorities, American policymakers and enforcement authorities should do everything they can to avoid aiding this misuse of antitrust as a domestic economic policy cudgel.

Curbing the Abuses of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law:
An Indictment and Reform Agenda

Richard A. Epstein

I. Introduction

There is a loud chorus of complaints from both the European Union and the United States about a systematic bias in China’s enforcement of its Anti-Monopoly Law (AML). This bias is evident in a wide range of economic sectors and companies. The Economist reports that China has imposed extra-heavy antitrust penalties on foreign automobile manufacturers, such as Daimler, including a record $200 million penalty on a group of ten Japanese car-parts firms, and the New York Times reports that China has imposed another $109 million penalty on six companies selling infant milk formula. China has also initiated antitrust enforcement actions against American high-tech companies, such as Microsoft and Qualcomm, and there is an ongoing Chinese probe of Qualcomm (a firm for which I have consulted unrelated issues), which is said to be done with an effort to force a reduction in the prices that it charges for its advanced wireless technology, which China needs to implement a new 4G system for mobile phones. Similarly, in a wide-ranging report on China’s abuse of the AML to advance domestic industrial policy, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce noted many examples, including a recent action against Microsoft in which Chinese antitrust authorities used its acquisition of Nokia as a basis for a completely “speculative possibility of licensor hold-up” to justify a decree to “cap license fees for domestic licensees of mobile handset-related software.” It is no wonder that many commentators are repeatedly stressing the distinctive foreign focus of China’s recent antitrust activities.

Chinese public officials insist that their stepped-up enforcement of the AML is even-handed. “Everyone is equal before the law,” asserted Li Pumin, the head of the National Development and Reform Commission, which takes the lead in investigating foreign firms. But others in China disagree. More market-oriented Chinese writers have lamented how China’s commitment to market processes has reversed course since the adoption of the AML law, as China is now using this law as an industrial policy cudgel in promoting its own domestic firms at the expense of foreign ones. Its recent behavior, which provoked expressions of concern from American antitrust officials at both the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, suggests that this is indeed the case.

II. The Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law

The current situation is an unwelcome reversal of the initial optimism that surrounded the adoption of the AML in 2008, and so a quick overview of the AML’s provisions is necessary. Hailed at the time as “a tremendous leap forward for China,” the law adopts, at least in the abstract, many of the standard categories of antitrust analysis found in the United States and in the European Union. In Article 3, it contains the standard prohibitions against horizontal arrangements that raise prices, reduce output, or divide territories, subject to an exemption under Article 15 for agreements that improve technical standards or upgrade consumer products. The AML also bans “abuse of dominant market positions by business operators,” which under Article 17 includes setting prices in “selling commodities at unfairly high prices or buying commodities at unfairly low prices;” or in selling goods at below costs, refusals to deal, and tie-in arrangements, all “without any justifiable cause.”[i]

In many ways what is most notable about the AML is the extent to which it imitates the major features, both good and bad, of the more developed competition law applied in the United States and the European Union. But by the same token, it is quite clear that the Chinese law is embedded in a different set of institutional arrangements. Two elements stand out.

First, the AML reflects the unique Chinese approach to “market socialism” that was first implemented by Deng Xiaoping’s reform policies in the late 1970s as “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Article 4 of the AML thus attempts to square the circle: “The State constitutes and carries out competition rules which accord with the socialist market economy, perfects macro-control, and advances a unified, open, competitive and orderly market system.”

Second, the socialist legacy reflected in Article 4 has resulted in an extensive system of state-owned industries in China, and Article 7 of the AML provides special controls, exemptions and protections for this sector of the Chinese economy:

Industries controlled by the State-owned economy and concerning the lifeline of national economy and national security or the industries implementing exclusive operation and sales according to law, the state protects the lawful business operations conducted by the business operators therein. The state also lawfully regulates and controls their business operations and the prices of their commodities and services so as to safeguard the interests of consumers and promote technical progresses.

The scope of Article 7 offers instructive clues toward understanding the current situation. Its text refers to entire “industries,” not just individual firms, that are given special treatment under the AML. It still speaks in terms of constraining the ability of “industries” to engage in any abusive practices, which at least in principle serve as the basis for competition-focused anti-monopoly law.

Unfortunately, the odds of it remaining focused in this constructive way are necessarily reduced because of its dual operation with respect to both state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and foreign corporations. The SOEs have a built-in preferential position that can manifest itself in two ways. Either they can get gentle slaps on the wrist for offenses that prompt far harsher sanctions against private companies, especially foreign companies who are either suppliers or competitors with SOEs, or the SOEs could prod Chinese anti-monopoly enforcement authorities to take action against their foreign competitors. The AML can all too easily function as a new form of protectionism by virtue of its differential application to foreign firms vis-à-vis SOEs doing business in China.

The difficulties here are increased, moreover, by the structural decision to parcel out enforcement of the AML to several agencies. The National Development and Reform Commission has the lead with respect to enforcement over monopoly agreements. The State Administration of Industry and Commerce deals with abuses of dominant position. The division of enforcement authority between these agencies makes it much harder to impose uniform standards on the overall operation of the system. This split in enforcement authority increases the risks of differential enforcement and, more worrisome, the misuse or discriminatory use of the AML.

Therefore, it is evident that no evaluation of the operation of the Chinese anti-monopoly system can be made solely on the basis of the statutory terms in the AML itself. So much depends on the oft-concealed enforcement practices of the relevant public authorities, who are given very broad powers of inspection and investigation under AML Article 39, which empowers the AML enforcers to run investigations “by getting into the business premises of business operators under investigation or by getting into any other relevant place,” or by forcing them to respond to interrogatories “to explain the relevant conditions” to the public authorities.” Chinese officials also have the power to examine or duplicate all business papers and to seize and retain relevant evidence, and to examine bank records and accounts. The only procedural protection contained in Article 39, if it can be called that, is that a “written report shall be submitted to the chief person(s)-in-charge of the anti-monopoly authority” before the investigation is approved. What kind of report and how it is to be reviewed are not stated, even though these substantive and procedural issues are subjects of volumes of statutory, regulatory and decisional law on administrative procedure in the United States and Europe. Even more significant, there is no mention anywhere in the AML of any probable cause or warrant requirement that must be demonstrated before any independent judicial body.

III. Rule of Law

At the root of the many complaints about the Chinese approach to competition law is the constant concern that its antitrust enforcement practices are inconsistent with the rule of law. Its legal system invites arbitrary and differential enforcement of anti-monopoly standards. In dealing with these rule of law issues, it is incumbent to note that they address a critical mix of concerns about both substantive standards and administrative enforcement.

As a general rule of thumb, the more precise the particular rules of conduct that receive government enforcement, the better the prospects to avoid both rule of law violations and the general perception of such government violations. In this regard, it is worth noting that the ordinary rules of property, contract and tort score very well under this general standard. As I have argued in my book Design For Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law, these common law rules have several key structural features that facilitate rule of law values.

First, the basic norm with respect to private property is that all other persons need only follow the basic norm “keep off” to comply with the system. The simplicity of this command means that anyone can follow it regardless of the size of the polity in which this rule operates. The same command works as well in China with 1.4 billion people as it does in New Zealand with a population just under 4.5 million people.

Second, the content of this simple rule is easily known and understood, so that no one need give special notice of what it requires to the many people who are bound by it. It is no small deal to have a rule that is not promulgated by statute, which is thereafter interpreted by dense pages of administrative text to which the public has only imperfect knowledge, and which both small and large businesses are able to interpret and apply only with the aid of professional intermediaries such as trade associations and law firms.

Third, the simple rule in question works as well in poor countries as in rich ones, so that there is no awkward transition in rules with increasing development over time. At this point, the property rules are complemented by the contract rules that allow people within broad limits to decide their own agreements for the provision of goods and services, so that in most cases the key function of the state is to enforce the agreement as designed, not to improve upon its terms with flights of legislative or judicial fancy.

The Chinese AML does not, and cannot, exhibit anything like the requisite level of overall clarity. In order to determine whether a horizontal arrangement violates the antitrust law, for example, it is necessary to have some sense as to the scope of the market, and the nature of the agreement, to see whether it is or is not in restraint of trade. It is also necessary to gather evidence about practices that can span both continents and years. The AML’s standards for dealing with abusive practices are even looser; for example, there is no clear metric by which to determine whether prices are unfairly high or unfairly low. Another nagging question is what it means under the AML for goods to be sold at below cost, because it is completely unclear if the metric is average or marginal cost. No matter which is chosen, the difficulties of estimation further the scope for abuse of administrative discretion.

This nagging uncertainty about the basic operating rules prompted the late Ronald H. Coase to quip to me long ago in a conversation only partly in jest: “If prices move up in any market, it is surely the result of monopolization. If they remain constant, it is surely the result of market stabilization arrangements. If they go down, it is surely the result of predation” (quoting from memory). Coase’s quip ruefully reflects the modus operandi of the Chinese AML. Since any and all price movements could be associated with some violation of the AML, it follows that in principle no party, and no group of firms, is immune from investigation and criminal prosecution, regardless of how it conducts its own business. And owing to the vastness of the multinational businesses who are targeted, these investigations can exert a large influence on the behavior of firms and on their key employees who bear the brunt of those investigations, where they are subject to the possibility of criminal sanctions in addition to emotional wear and tear.

IV. The Patent Dimension

The dangers of this system are apparent and easily understood. With respect to accusations of secret horizontal arrangements and price gouging arrangements, the risk comes in the form of extensive and exhaustive investigations that are intended to stifle and not promote competition in the marketplace. In dealing with these issues, it is critical that our American legal authorities do not give aid and comfort to China’s aggressive regulation of foreign businesses enterprise by the way in which American regulators address similar issues in this country. We live today in an intensely global environment, and any actions in the United States that overstate the role of the antitrust laws can easily be used as reasons to expand antitrust application overseas.

The point applies to all areas of law, but has especial importance in connection with patents, given that technology that is available in one country is instantly available in all. After the Supreme Court handed down eBay v. MercExchange in 2006, injunctive relief is no longer presumptively available for patent infringement in the United States. As Professor Scott Kieff, now of the International Trade Commission, and I have written, eBay eased the way for Thailand to impose its regime of compulsory licensing for pharmaceutical patents, at far below market rates.

Evidently, decisions like eBay do not go unnoticed by foreign nations, where they set up a climate in which the weak enforcement of patent rights becomes par for the course. That same development happens most emphatically in the crossover area between patent and antitrust law. In general, the proper application of the antitrust law does not single out patents for special treatment of the antitrust laws. A clear articulation of this principle was recently made by FTC Commissioner Joshua D. Wright in his 2014 Milton Handler Lecture: “Does the FTC Have a New IP Agenda,” which stressed the importance of the “parity principle” that states a central tenet in the Department of Justice/Federal Trade Commission 1995 Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property: “Agencies apply the same general antitrust principles to conduct involving intellectual property that they apply to conduct involving any other form of tangible or intangible property.”

The parity principle is critical to successful antitrust enforcement because it places an important fetter on the arbitrary use of government power, which increases greatly if any government, China included, could use a wide catalogue of novel arguments to justify some deviation from the general rule. Indeed, this parity principle is an extension of what I have termed elsewhere as the “carry over” principle, which means that intellectual property rights in general should be based on the rules that are applicable to other forms of property, subject only to deviations required by the distinctive features of property rights in information, which chiefly relates to their finite duration to allow for the widespread dissemination of information. But once that key adjustment is made, the standard rules for property used elsewhere, including the rules for injunctive relief, should continue to apply.

Yet as Commissioner Wright mentioned, recent FTC and DOJ actions presume that “special rules for IP are desirable . . . and that business arrangements involving IP rights may be safely presumed to be anticompetitive without rigorous economic analysis and proof of competitive harm.” Commissioner Wright has also recognized the “growing concern about some antitrust regimes around the world using antitrust laws to further nationalistic goals at the expense of [intellectual property rights] holders, among others.” He specifically mentioned China as one such antitrust regime that may be finding encouragement or at least rationalization in these recent actions against IP owners by American antitrust agencies.

This same theme has been recently echoed by FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen, who noted how foreign nations invoke “‘competition fig leaves’ to address other domestic issues or concerns.” More specifically, Commissioner Ohlhausen explained how this tendency has manifested itself in the debate over standard essential patents (SEPS), that is those patents that are incorporated in setting key technical standards that allow for the interoperability of various technical devices. She also noted how recent American decisions on SEPs have “created potentially confusing precedent for foreign enforcers.” That concern was brought home when Chinese officials invoked recent FTC enforcement actions against Bosch and Google SEPs to justify a per se claim under the AML that “an ‘unreasonable’ refusal to grant a license for a standard essential patent to a competitor should constitute monopolization under the essential facilities doctrine.” Such broad propositions pave the way for Chinese officials to favor domestic, state-run companies who incorporate foreign patented innovation in their own domestic products and services. These unfettered notions of “unreasonable” conduct become weapons that let Chinese officials force down prices of foreign goods to promote their own nationalist economic policies. Unfortunately, as Commissioner Ohlhausen observed just this past September, recent U.S. antitrust enforcement actions are giving Chinese officials grist for their industrial policy mill, by insisting that their heavy-handed antitrust action against foreign patent owners “has support in U.S. precedent,” such as the Google and Bosh settlements.

V. Enforcement Abuses

The suppression of patent licensing rates charged to domestic Chinese firms is just one example of how the AML enforcers have a built-in invitation to run massively intrusive and expensive investigations into any firms. These investigations are unhampered by any clear legal definition of relevance and are undertaken without regard to the high costs incurred by firms seeking to comply with the officials’ edicts, both administrative and reputational. In some cases, the charge falls within the yawning gap in the AML concerning limits on its enforcement practices. For example, the European Union Chamber of Commerce has found that China engages in administrative intimidation, which is intended to short-circuit formal hearings, and forces parties charged to appear before tribunal hearings without the assistance of counsel and without involving their own governments or chambers of commerce in the process.

It is of course impossible for any academic sitting in the United States to make any estimation of the actual level of abuse in any one individual case. But the simple point here is that the Chinese authorities are already low on credibility because of the way in which they conduct themselves in so many other areas. It takes no great imagination to connect the dots between China’s anti-monopoly investigations of foreign companies doing business in China proper with the Chinese government’s hostile response to the Hong Kong protests against the high-handed way in which Chinese authorities are stifling homegrown democratic activities by insisting on government vetting of all candidates for public office to weed out those who might oppose China’s national agenda. And it takes no great leap in imagination to realize that the same aggressive attitude that China now takes on territorial issues with Vietnam and Japan can spill over to these investigations. It is also well known that China blocks (censors) service supplied by the mainstays of the internet and social media, including Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Twitter, which would provide ample opportunity for information about government (and private) abuses to be widely spread.

It also looks as though the lack of any formal protections in the AML investigative process opens up the entire system to these forms of abuse. The lack of any reliable reporting on these matters is consistent with wide-scale abuse because of this simple stylized threat: “Be silent and take your punishment and we shall reduce the penalties. Speak about the matter in public and the penalties will increase.” These threats are all too credible within a tightly run collectivist society. The legal system may give little or no relief, and even if the courts were somehow attuned to the civil liberties and procedural issues, the lack of any clear standards for what counts as either a violation or an appropriate penalty reduces the chances that judicial intervention could be used to slow down an official juggernaut.

VI. Reforms

China needs to do more than make bland and predictable protestations that the AML applies on even terms for all players. The question is how? At the most basic level, one way to get rid of this problem is to spin off all SOEs into private hands, preferably by bona fide auctions, so that there is less risk of political influence displacing the rule of law. That path is of course hampered by China’s explicit commitment to socialist principles in the AML and everywhere else.

There is, however, no reason why that has to create an insuperable barrier. Socialist principles are also inconsistent with private ownership of the means of production, and with the belief that open competition in the marketplace will assure the highest level of social output for any given set of resources. In a sense, the 2007 adoption of the AML itself should be regarded as an implicit rejection of the principles of the socialist economy found in Article 4, because it assumes private companies and a functioning free market. It should take only a little imagination to push the cycle one step further by privatizing key government industries with auctions or other schemes of devolution, and the Chinese government has already proven resourceful in finding ways to explain how such free market reforms are consistent with its preexisting socialist system.

Even if this approach is not undertaken, it should still be possible to make reforms internal to the AML itself that are not likely to reduce its economic benefits but could do much to control its adverse effects. Within the American system, a strong distinction is taken between the horizontal arrangements that are governed under Section 1 of the 1890 Sherman Act and the variety of vertical arrangements that are covered under the monopolization provisions of Section 2. The argument in favor of this distinction turns on the anticipated rate of social return from the enforcement of these two provisions.

With the Section 1 prohibition on contracts in restraint of trade, the nature of the societal loss is generally easy to figure out. The horizontal arrangements that restrict output, raise prices or divide territories do not result only in the transfer of wealth from consumers to producers, but also a reduction in overall social wealth by removing those transactions that could take place for mutual benefit at the competitive price, but which will be foreclosed when the cartel raises its price to the monopoly level. As noted earlier, the Chinese AML tracks that approach, at least on paper. The enforcement questions here are not easy, but since there is a clear sense of what the wrong is, it should be possible to obtain evidence from examining evidence of cooperation, including from disgruntled employees of the given firms. And the matter can be helped along immeasurably by rules that waive treble damages to the first cartel member that reports the cartel practices. These rules apply with great force in the current American enforcement efforts, much of which has been directed toward international cartels.

The dynamics under Section 2 of the Sherman Act are quite different. In these instances, it is hard to develop a simple explanation as to why various kinds of vertical arrangements are harmful to consumer welfare. In many cases, the practices that are undertaken by the dominant firm are also undertaken by their smaller rivals that have no element of market power. The clear implication of this simple point is that the practices that are routinely attacked as restrictive are also practices that have efficiency benefits. Any effort to ban or punish these factors could both stifle useful innovations and distort the competitive balance between firms of different size.

The situation gets even worse when the only charge leveled under the AML is that prices are “unfairly high” or “unfairly low,” which is just asking for trouble. At one level the impetus behind this claim is that certain products are sold at higher (or lower) prices in China than in the United States or the European Union. But these simple price comparisons miss so many of the relevant marketplace complications. Higher prices could stem from higher costs in distribution or in compliance with local laws. Lower prices could result from the simple fact that the fixed costs of producing these goods are allocated to the home market where demand is higher, such that the foreign sales at a lower price improve the welfare of both the firm (which gets a chance to expand markets and recover an additional fraction of its fixed costs) and its Chinese customers, who get the benefit of low prices that forces local firms to reduce their costs. It follows therefore that the Chinese antitrust system could do well to narrow the class of offenses that are said to be practiced by dominant firms, avoiding confusing and unclear terms such as “unfair” prices.

Once a sharper definition of monopolization activities is adopted, it reduces the pressure on the enforcement system to engage in overbroad and unfettered investigations or prosecutions, and thus the risks of massive abuse. Nonetheless, it is a grim fact of life that the investigation of cartel-like behavior is always intrusive, precisely because these arrangements are always carried out in secret, which requires extensive government efforts to ferret them out. But in this regard, it is imperative that China reform its antitrust system for the benefit of both its own citizens and foreign companies investing in China. It should adopt procedural protections that impose some definitive and clear checks on how investigators can behave in ways that avoid both massive human rights violations on the one hand and routine investigative abuses on the other.

At this point, it is necessary to add into Chinese law the same kinds of safeguards that are commonplace in most countries with respect to other forms of criminal investigation, whether crimes of violence or drug offenses, or simple cases of fraud and nondisclosure in financial circles and elsewhere. The point here is that the most dangerous sentence in the English language—“trust me I am from the government”—translates perfectly into Chinese. It is not enough that the abuse stops. It is absolutely imperative that the appearance of abuse ceases as well. Those reforms are not beyond the power of the Chinese legal system to implement, but it will take a long overdue switch from the inquisitorial types of system that socialist countries have found all too congenial in the political and economic sphere.

In urging these major antitrust reforms, it is imperative to put the Chinese position into global perspective. The Chinese government is not the only government that uses its anti-monopoly laws as a cudgel to achieve other political or economic objectives. It has lots of company worldwide. There are, more specifically, other illustrations of abuse in the United States and the European Union. The American system is overly exuberant in its discovery processes, especially with respect to international operations under the 1995 guidelines of the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. It offers shameless protection to American export cartels under the Webb-Pomerene Act, passed in 1918 at the end of World War I, when the need for free trade could hardly have been greater. The European Union thrives on broad definitions of “abuse of dominant position” under Article 102 of its 2009 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The enforcement in many other nations, such as India, with its endless protectionist practices, is also in need of major reform.

In dealing with all these multi-national issues, the fundamental insight is that free trade across international borders offers the best hope for the amelioration of the human condition, especially in developing or underdeveloped countries. It is widely understood that tariffs and other restrictions impede the flow of goods across international borders, which is why the World Trade Organization maintains global free trade as its primary objective. The general attack on explicit entry restrictions by foreign firms and goods has borne much fruit in recent years, although there is still work to be done. But it is precisely because tariffs and other barriers to entry are public and thus verifiable that it is (relatively) easy to control their abuse.

The success of the WTO in controlling these practices does not put to rest the protectionist impulses that have generated too many obstacles to free trade. The differential enforcement of the anti-monopoly laws poses major dangers in this regard, for the same laws that protect against anticompetitive practices are all too often used to achieve the very abuse that they are intended to guard against. Commissioner Ohlhausen bluntly puts the point: “Critics claim that China is using its antitrust law to promote industrial policy.” The unfortunate situation in China is but one example of that dangerous set of practices, which unchecked could spread to other countries, motivated either by imitating what China has done or retaliating against its abuses. The risk is that the disease can spread all too easily. Other nations can protest against these practices. But ultimately it is for China itself to throw aside the shackles that disadvantage foreign firms and the Chinese people alike.

Endnotes:

[i] The AML also contains a prohibition against mergers that lead to “concentration of business operators that eliminates or restricts competition or might be eliminating or restricting competition,” but this is not addressed in this brief essay. These prohibitions cover only a few large transactions, none of which involve ordinary commercial practices that are the subject of the anti-monopoly and abuse of practice provisions at issue in the current applications of the AML.

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Patent Policy Debates Characterized by "Intolerably High Ratio of Theory to Evidence"

Post author By Joshua Grove
Post date September 11, 2014

In an interview with Law360 last week, FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright spoke about the FTC’s upcoming study on PAEs and the state of today’s patent policy debates. The interview is well-worth reading in it’s entirety, and we’ve also highlighted a couple key quotes below.

“One of the most fascinating things about the the policy debates in and around patents and by extension the intersection of patent law and antitrust law, is that most of the debate is chock full of theory and supposition but completely devoid of empirical evidence…It is very difficult to move forward sensibly in debates with those characteristics”

“Wright said that without evidence of ‘pervasive market failure’ in the standard setting space, the FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice should avoid the temptation to serve as ‘management consultant’ to standard setting groups and their members.”

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