RAMBUS V. INFINEON: PATENT DISCLOSURES IN STANDARD-SETTING ORGANIZATIONS

摘要

Courts should give broad deference to SSOs' IP policies as a means of private governance. These policies serve to prevent abuse of the standard-setting process and encourage interoperability. While interoperability standards in network markets provide significant consumer benefits, granting IP rights in the technology underlying an interoperability standard poses a risk to competition and may entrench inferior technology. As a result, standard-setting organizations have adopted a number of IP policies to weaken IP protection. These policies allow consumers to capture the benefits of network effects while providing technology producers with the sufficient incentive to invent. The Federal Circuit's recent Rambus v. Infineon decision weakened the effectiveness of these policies by creating a very narrow disclosure duty. Such a narrow duty will allow standard-setting participants to capture industry standards. Sufficiently robust disclosure provisions are needed to ensure that SSOs' various technologies compete within the standard-setting process. Such competition increases the likelihood that an optimum technology will be adopted. While a broad disclosure duty will impose a burden on the SSO participants, the disclosure provisions have minimal effect on incentives to invent, and the burden of searching for proprietary technology is better placed upon the IP owner, as it is the IP owner who stands to benefit from the SSO's adoption of the technology.