A PYMNTS Company

Tying and Exclusion in FRAND Licensing: Evaluating Qualcomm

By  |  February 12, 2020

By Erik Hovenkamp(University of Southern California) & Timothy Simcoe (Boston University)

    Get the Full Story

    Complete the form to unlock this article and enjoy unlimited free access to all PYMNTS content — no additional logins required.

    yesSubscribe to our daily newsletter, PYMNTS Today.

    By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.

    In an enforcement action brought by the Federal Trade Commission, a district court recently found that Qualcomm violated the antitrust laws by engaging in anticompetitive exclusive dealing and refusing to license its standard-essential patents (SEPs) to rivals. In this article, we unpack and evaluate three aspects of the Qualcomm decision. First, we describe how the tying relationship between chips and licenses goes primarily in the opposite direction of how most commentators characterize it. Second, we consider how Qualcomm’s commitments to license its SEPs on “fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory” (FRAND) terms bear on the antitrust analysis. Third, we discuss how FRAND might have been used to better justify finding an antitrust duty-to-deal with competitors.

    Continue Reading…