NIPC News

Whitehall Author: Tbmurray , L icence: CC BY 3.0 ,   Source: Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert On 15 July 2025, the British government launched a consultation on SEP licensing , which I discussed in  Latest Consultation on Standard Essential Patent Licensing   on 18 July 2025.  The consultation received 93 replies , which the government has now considered.   It published its response on 13 Oct 2026. The Problem To facilitate the development and distribution of new electronic products, standard setting organisations ("SSOs")  such as the  European Telecommunication Standards Institute ("ETSI" ) or the International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardisation Sector (ITU-T)  establish technical standards to enable different manufacturers' devices to work together using the latest technology. Often, such standards require businesses wishing to implement them ( "implementers" ) to use patented inventions.  Patents for in...

Intellectual Property Office Crown Copyright 2007  Open Government Licence v3.0     Jane Lambert A standard essential patent ("SEP") is a patent that has to be worked in order to comply with a technical standard.  Organizations that set such standards (known as standards-setting organizations or SSOs) require SEP proprietors to promise to license the use of their patents to businesses that want to make or distribute products that comply with those standards ("implementers") on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory ("FRAND") terms as a condition for including their patents within the standards. On paper, this looks like a very fair arrangement and in theory, it should work very well but in fact, it doesn't.   One problem is that implementers use a standard without paying any royalties or licence fees to the SEP owners arguing that their patents are invalid or not essential for compliance with the patent.   Another is that SEP owners and implement...

Intellectual Property Office Crown Copyright 2007 Open Government Licence v3.0   Jane Lambert One of the talks that I gave at the Cambridge IP Law Winter School  was "TMT: A SEP and FRAND Overview".    I did not choose that title so I shall try to explain what I think it means.   "TMT" stands for technology, media and telecoms. TMT is a sector where there has been a lot of litigation about "SEPs".  SEPs are "standard-essential patents", that is to say, patents for inventions that a telecoms equipment manufacturer has to use if it is to implement a technical standard.  Technical standards are set by standards-setting organizations ("SSOs"). An important SSO for mobile communications is the European Telecommunications Standards Institute ("ETSI") .   "FRAND" is short for "fair", "reasonable" and "nondiscriminatory" and refers to the terms on which SEP owners are supposed to license the use...