LES USA & Canada Annual Meeting

15-20 October 2020 - Antitrust and Patent Law: Crossroad or Intersection?

The question of licensing SEP rights and the implementation of the FRAND declaration’s rule has created different and conflicting decisions taken by the courts.

This matter became a “headache”, also because everything is made more complicated by the fact that patent law and antitrust law are used in contrast with each other instead of complementing each other.

To have a balanced view of the impact of these two laws in patent licensing or litigations, it is first necessary to remember what the areas of applicability of patent law and anti-trust law actually are. The first one regulates the patent system as regards the validity requirements and the modalities of the use of the legal monopoly created by patents. The second one concerns the competition between companies and a correct market policy.

So, it can be summed up that patent law regulates the use of patents, while antitrust law ensures, inter alias, that patents are not misused on the market. In other words, the consequences of the use of patent law should not be a crossroad with antitrust law.

On October 18 at 3 p.m. (EDT) during the 2020 LES USA&Canada Virtual Annual Meeting, Roberto Dini, Founder of Sisvel, together with Garrard Beeney, Partner at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, Dina Kallay, Head of Antitrust at Ericsson, and John Paul, Partner at Finnegan will analyze this topic from different point of views. They will explain how the two set of laws should form an intersection through which patent and antitrust laws promote a synergistic use of the two tools, in order to develop new technologies that improve life and, at the same time, monitor that there are no abuses distorting the market.