Can't Stop The FRAND: Navigating SEP Licensing Disputes

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated a district court's decision to deny an antisuit injunction prohibiting a patent owner from enforcing injunctions that it obtained in Columbia and Brazil on standard essential patents (SEPs). Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, et al. v. Lenovo (United States), Inc., Case No. 24-1515 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 24, 2024) (Prost, Lourie, Reyna, JJ.)

Lenovo and Ericsson entered into negotiations to cross-license their SEPs to each other. SEPs are patents declared essential to complying with a technical standard. Because SEPs by definition must be practiced to comply with a given standard, SEP holders wield significant power over standard implementers during licensing negotiations. Standard setting organizations therefore typically have an intellectual property policy under which SEP holders agree to license their SEPs on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms. Here, the parties agreed that the FRAND