초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Legal problem on the patent poolKang, Su-KyoungAs with any aggregation of patent rights for the purpose of joint package licensing, commonly known as a patent pool, an antitrust analysis of this proposed licensing program must examine both the pool's expected competitive benifits and its potential competitive hazards. In particular, one expects that a patent pool may provide competitive benifits by integrating complementary technologies, reducing transaction costs, clearing blocking positions, and avoiding costly infringement litigation. At the same time, some patent pools can restrict competition, whether among intellectual property rights within the pool or downstream products incorporating the pooled patents or in innovation among parties to the pool. Accordingly, the following analysis addresses whether the proposed licensing program is likely to integrate complementary patent rights and, if so, whether the resulting competitive benefits are likely to be outweighed by competitive harm posed by other aspects of the program.Inclusion in the pool of two or more of those patents would risk turning the pool into a price-fixing mechanism. Inclusion in the pool of one of the patents, which the pool would convey along with the essential patents, could in certain cases unreasonably foreclose the competing patents from use by manufacturers ; because the manufacturers would obtain a license to the one patent with the pool, they might choose not to license any of the competing patents, even if they otherwise would regard the competitive patents as superior. Limiting a pool to essential patents ensurers that neither of these concerns will arise ; rivalry is foreclosed neither among patents within the pool nor between patents in the pool and patents outside it.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
patent pool, anticompetitive, essential patents
