Facts, figures and fun with FRAND: the seminar

When GSM stood for
"grandma's sewing machine" ...

Yesterday's seminar, “Facts and figures on FRAND licensing for standards-essential IP”, turned out to be a most enjoyable and interesting experience.  Keith Mallinson (WiseHarbor) gave a presentation which covered a wide range of issues concerning the way we understand and view FRAND licences, patent pools and the measurement of their impact on profit, competition and the uptake of new technologies in the mobile telecoms sector. Other topics which made brief appearances included sewing machine cartels, regression analysis and the sinister-sounding Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.

Panellists Enrico Bonadio (City Law School), Dan Hermele (Qualcomm) and Richard Vary (Nokia) threw in a number of further ingredients and we had a chance to debate the question whether the Dutch courts' approach to the resolution of infringement/refusal to license issues, as illustrated by the recent spat between Samsung and Apple, was the best way of encouraging the litigants to negotiate their own settlement.

IP Finance's expectations were dashed when the number of chairs laid out for those attending proved insufficient since -- quite remarkably -- virtually every one of the statistically-likely "no-shows" actually turned up, even though there were other exciting events in town on the same day.

IP Finance thanks Olswang LLP for once again providing a venue and refreshments. IP Finance also thanks Keith for all his hard work in preparing and delivering a most entertaining and informative paper: you can access his slides as a pdf file here.