Posts in International

The U.S. Supreme Court today heard oral arguments in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc., which asks the Court to consider whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit erred in applying the Lanham Act extraterritorially to Abitron’s foreign sales, “including purely foreign sales that never reached the United States or confused U.S. consumers.” The Justices struggled with the appropriate reach of the Lanham Act and whether reversing the Tenth Circuit would require overruling Steele v. Bulova Watch Co., 344 U.S. 280, 282-285 (1952), but overall seemed to be considering the need for a new or narrowed test to account for the realities of modern commerce.

In Part I of this two-part article, we provided an analysis of the Wi-Fi 6 litigation and technology landscape. This Part II discusses important changes to the IEEE rules governing the reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) licensing encumbrances on SEPs held by participants in IEEE standardization work. Unfortunately, these rule changes fall short of clarifying what RAND means for Wi-Fi licensors and implementers. Instead, fueled by Wi-Fi 6’s growing valuation and adoption of heavily patented core technologies from LTE and 5G, the rule changes arguably will only heat up the current litigation trend.    

Recently, ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot program developed by OpenAI, has become a popular topic, attracting much attention and discussion. Its applications in the fields of natural language processing and text analysis have been well documented and have aroused great interest. It can be used to generate various language models, such as natural language texts, dialogues, and question-answering. It is currently one of the most advanced and efficient technologies in the language field. ChatGPT has a wide range of applications. In fields like medical, financial, legal, and media, ChatGPT can also be used to generate and analyze text data, thereby improving work efficiency and accuracy. Recently, the technology has even been used in the realm of intellectual property, with some having used it to draft patent applications.

Lenovo has been ordered to pay InterDigital a lump sum of $138.7 million for a global FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) license covering sales of cellular devices from 2007 to December 31, 2023, in the second full FRAND trial to be decided by the UK courts, following the landmark Unwired Planet case. (Interdigital Technology Corporation & Ors v Lenovo Group Ltd (FRAND Judgment – Public Version) [2023] EWHC 539 (Pat).) In his redacted judgment published on March 15, Mr. Justice Mellor found that neither InterDigital’s August 2021 license offer (which amounted to $337 million) nor Lenovo’s counter offer (which comprised a lump sum of $80 million +/-15% for all sales in the six-year term to the end of 2023 with a full release for all past sales for no additional consideration) were FRAND or within the FRAND range.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is providing enormous productivity and increased value in many applications. But AI is no panacea and is not yet sufficiently well developed to be precise or dependable everywhere. For example, much better AI training data is required to reliably estimate patent essentiality to standards such as 4G and 5G, where AI is being advocated by various experts and has already been adopted by one patent pool. There is also a lot of room for improvement in inferencing.

The U.S. House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet held a hearing Wednesday that was part one of a series it will be running on IP and “Strategic Competition with China.” On the same day, speakers on the final panel of IPWatchdog’s AI Masters discussed many of the same issues addressed in the hearing, with the overwhelming takeaway across both panels being that the United States needs a new plan when it comes to IP protection in cutting-edge technology sectors, where China is increasingly outpacing U.S. innovation. The House hearing was introduced by Subcommittee Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA), who explained that the United States’ national security is at risk because China is on a quest to achieve technological superiority. Issa told his colleagues that “the witnesses will both educate us, and to a certain extent, scare many of us.”

Patents essential to standards are surrounded by discussion, dispute and litigation. A key focus of this activity is how to decide on what is a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) rate for using standard-essential patents (SEPs), and arrive at a number that both licensor and licensee can accept. In other words, we need a “path to success”. To accomplish this, I think what is needed first is a good method or approach to doing the calculation of a rate, a method which both parties can agree on. Once the parties have agreed on how to calculate, the licensing negotiations will likely be streamlined and there might be an easier and speedier path to success.

The People’s Vaccine Alliance released comments this week on a draft of a pandemic accord currently being considered during the fourth meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) at the World Health Organization (WHO). The organization criticized the draft for lacking strong language that would obligate WHO member parties to share knowledge and intellectual property during a pandemic. The Zero Draft is being discussed at the INB meeting from February 27-March 3, and the organization will later decide if it will be the basis of negotiation for the pandemic prevention accord. After the fourth meeting, the INB will hold another meeting from April 3-6, and it will report on developments around the accord in May, at the 76th World Health Assembly. The People’s Vaccine Alliance saw some positives in the Zero Draft; however, the group asked for more concrete language on the issue of intellectual property rights, among other topics.

On February 27, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a motion for leave filed by the U.S. Solicitor General to participate in oral argument, as well as for divided argument and for enlargement of oral argument time, in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. While the Court’s decision to grant the motion shows its interest in the Solicitor General’s arguments in favor of limiting the extraterritorial reach of the Lanham Act, a reply brief filed the same day by petitioner Abitron argues that the federal government’s proposed legal tests still go too far in allowing Lanham Act claims to reach foreign infringing sales. Last September, the U.S. Solicitor General filed a brief representing the views of the federal government on the issues in Abitron Austria, a case which asks whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit erred in awarding civil remedies under the Lanham Act for infringement of U.S. trademarks through purely foreign sales that neither reached the United States nor confused U.S. consumers. In its brief, the Solicitor General urged the Supreme Court to grant Abitron’s petition for writ of certiorari and rein in the Tenth Circuit’s approach toward awarding Lanham Act damages for foreign infringing sales.

The Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued its 11th annual International IP Index today, striking what seems like a more dismal tone than usual compared with past reports. While 18 economies saw modest progress on IP protection improvements, 28 economies, including many of the high-scorers, like the United States and the United Kingdom, had a 0% change in score. Only two countries had a 0% change in the 10th edition of the Index. The Index covers 55 economies that represent “most of the global economic output, together contributing over 90% of global GDP.”

On February 17, 2023, Germany ratified the Agreement on the Unified Patent Court. This means that the Unified Patent Court (UPC) will definitely go live on June 1, 2023. Thus, it’s time to get one’s ducks in a row and to prepare for this new court system, which provides for a new pan European injunction in patent matters. In order to faciliate such preparation, we will be providing a series of five articles over the coming months until the system starts that will deal with the most important aspects of the UPC.

A company’s trademark activity is a very telling indicator of whether it is interested in a particular country’s or region’s market. Often, a national intellectual property (IP) office or the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) IP registry can speak loudest about a company’s true intentions. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. It is instructive to examine how foreign companies behaved with respect to IP registration and renewal in Ukraine to predict how they view business prospects in Ukraine going forward.

A report released  Wednesday by MarqVision found that 68% of direct-to-customer (DTC) brands have had their products counterfeited. The report surveyed 295 representatives from DTC brands across the world. The report also provides information about how worried DTC brands are about IP infringement and counterfeiting. The DTC market has tripled over the last five years, accounting now for $1 of every $7 spent, according to the report.

The American Bar Association (ABA) filed an amicus brief on February 3 with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to clarify issues related to the application of the Lanham Act to trademark disputes that cross international borders. The ABA filed the brief in the Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. trademark case, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed a $90 million damages award for trademark infringement based on infringement that occurred almost entirely outside of the United States.

On January 23, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) published a report entitled Wake Up, America: China is Overtaking the United States in Innovation Output, which applies innovation and industrial performance metrics for comparing relative innovation outputs from foreign technological rivals China and the United States. The report, produced by ITIF’s Hamilton Center on Industrial Strategy, is the latest indicator that China is close to surpassing the United States in terms of innovation output per capita and calls upon U.S. policymakers to develop a national economic and technology policy to restore U.S. dominance in innovation.