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Authored by: Ian Al on Tuesday, October 23 2012 @ 01:22 AM EDT |
The US is only part of the world economy. It is one of many legal jurisdictions.
Patent laws vary across the world. Patents have to be taken out, broadly, in
each country for which protection is required (EPO patents are not valid across
Europe, for instance).
As PJ has pointed out, the contractual situation posed by international FRAND
declarations have legal consequences in the US that can only be discerned after
the outcome of court cases.
It would not be feasible for an international standards organisation to track
the pertinent patents in every country in the world, let alone the legal
position caused by FRAND declarations in every jurisdiction.
You might also come to the conclusion that most of the UN funds going to their
specialist standards agencies would end up in the pockets of international
lawyers rather than to engineering and technology specialists.
There is another issue. The standards in the current case are issued both by the
US professional body representing electrical engineers and later adopted
(usually with technical updates) by the UN ITU. There will be an appalling
situation akin to jurisdiction shopping with US courts having to decide whether
an agreement with a US professional engineering body trumps a declaration
published by a UN agency in Switzerland.
The final point I would make is that US courts claim jurisdiction over the rest
of the world when it comes to patents and, as a result, they vary the local
patent and contract laws (e.g. third party contracts based on German patents in
Germany). If the UN cannot rely on the international agreements made by the US
over patent law, how can they be expected to administer patent law and
royalties?
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Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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