Motorola Mobility may be violating EU antitrust laws...
Motorola Mobility may be violating EU antitrust laws by seeking and enforcing an injunction against Apple in Germany based on its mobile phone standard-essential patents (SEPs), the European Commission said Monday. Although injunctions can be used in patent infringement cases,…
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they may amount to abusive conduct where SEPs are concerned and where the potential licensee is willing to obtain a license on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, it said. In that situation, the EC believes dominant SEP holders shouldn’t be allowed to ask for injunctions, which generally bar sales of the product that infringes the patent, in order to distort licensing negotiations and impose unjustified terms on licensees, it said. Such misuse of SEPs could ultimately hurt consumers, it said. Standards bodies usually require members to commit to licensing patents they have declared essential for a standard on FRAND terms, it said. The commitment is aimed at ensuring effective access to a standard for all market players and to stop a single SEP holder from holding up rivals, it said. Access to SEPs is a precondition for any company to sell interoperable products in the market, it said. Motorola’s SEPs relate to the European Telecommunications Standardization Institute’s GPRS standard, part of the GSM standard, a key industry standard for mobile and wireless communications, the EC said. When the standard was adopted in Europe, Motorola Mobility promised to license patents it declared essential to the standard on FRAND terms, but it then sought an injunction against Apple in Germany, and enforced it, although Apple said it was willing to be bound by a determination of FRAND royalties by the German court. The EC believes the injunction in this case hurts competition, and opened an antitrust investigation in April. It sent a “statement of objections” to Motorola Mobility, which now has the right to respond and ask for an oral hearing, the EC said. Sending the statement doesn’t prejudge the final outcome of the probe, it said.