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Authored by: UncleVom on Thursday, November 08 2012 @ 07:12 PM EST |
Sometimes the Courts will stand strong on basic principals.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6693/125/
(You can make a clicky. No?)
Some may wish to see this logic spill back over the Southern border.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 08 2012 @ 07:58 PM EST |
The Supreme Court, in an unanimous 7-0 ruling, annulled Pfizer's
[redacted] patent, saying it tried to "game" the Canadian system. The high court
sided with Teva Canada's challenge of the legitimacy of the patent, paving the
way for cheaper, generic versions.
The decision has big implications for
users of erectile dysfunction drugs and the pharmaceutical industry because it
allows companies to create generic versions that are usually cheaper for
consumers.
Mike Blanchfield, The Tyee
---
Decision
Teva Canada Ltd. v. Pfizer Canada Inc., 2012 SCC 60
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 08 2012 @ 10:32 PM EST |
Competition
in Information Technologies: Standards-
Essential Patents, Non-Practicing
Entities and FRAND Bidding
Abstract:
Standard Setting
is omnipresent in networked information technologies.
Virtually every cellular
phone, computer, digital camera or similar device
contains technologies
governed by a collaboratively developed standard. If
these technologies are to
perform competitively, the processes by which
standards are developed and
implemented must be competitive. In this case
attaining competitive results
requires a mixture of antitrust and non-antitrust
legal tools.
FRAND
refers to a firm’s ex ante commitment to make its technology
available at a
“fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory royalty.” The FRAND
commitment results
from bidding to have one’s own technology selected as a
standard. Typically the
FRAND commitment is not a promise to charge any
particular price, but only a
price that meets FRAND expectations. This permits
members of a standard setting
organization (SSO) to focus on technical issues
and worry about the price
later. Two important questions that a FRAND
commitment typically leaves open is
the royalty base and the royalty rate. A
strong case can be made that the base
should be the smallest saleable unit
containing the patented technology. While
that base is not entirely free from
problems, it does provide a more-or-less
common currency. The FRAND
obligation that the rate be nondiscriminatory
typically, but not always,
provides a set of yardsticks for measuring the rate.
The non-practicing entity (NPE) that voluntarily declines to participate in
an SSO process should generally be held to the FRAND royalty as its measure
of
its damages, even though its particular patents are not FRAND-
encumbered. In
this case a “reasonable” royalty is the royalty that the patent
holder would
have obtained in the competitive market in which it might have
participated.
The case for limiting NPE damages in this way is strongest when
the NPE had
actual or objectively reasonable knowledge of the SSO process
but declined to
participate. The case is weakest when the SSO’s processes
were not well
communicated to outsiders or the NPE in question was not
permitted to
participate.
FRAND commitments should “run with the patent,” in the sense
that
owners of FRAND-encumbered patents should not be able to free them simply
by assigning the patents to someone else. One fundamental principle of
property law is that a property owner cannot transfer away a larger interest
than it owns. The entire FRAND commitment process would be worthless if
patent
holders were able to evade it by the simple device of assigning
encumbered
patents in order to remove the encumbrance.
The question of injunctive
relief is only a little more complex. A FRAND
commitment is on its face an
offer to license to all who employ that patent in
their standards-compatible
product. True, the precise royalty terms are
typically not specified in
advance, but that entails that the FRAND royalty will
be determined by
reference to common indicia such as rates paid for similar
technologies in the
same or perhaps another situation. Further, the FRAND
commitment effectively
turns the royalty issues into a breach of contract claim
rather than a
litigated royalty claim. Permitting the owner of a FRAND-
encumbered patent to
have an injunction against someone willing to pay
FRAND royalties is tantamount
to making the patent holder the dictator of the
royalties, which once again is
the same thing as no FRAND commitment at all. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 08 2012 @ 11:17 PM EST |
I was looking at the instructions for a terrestrial HD receiver with PVR and it
states that it has to reformat drives as it uses a proprietary format.
Model is - Brand: DTVS Model: DTVS-T1...
Anybody any idea of what format it uses as I wouldn't want my USB hard drives
reformatted to something that Linux cannot read. It appears to be a re-badged
machine from somewhere with no indication of the original manufacturer and being
sold locally by an outfit that I don't know. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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