NIPC News

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology Author bryan...   Licence CC BY-SA 2.0   Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert   In Patents: a New Resource Hub on Standard Essential Patents in May and HMG's other Proposals on FRAND Licensing ,  I wrote on 5 March 2025: "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." I added that in theory such a condition looks very fair and ought to work very well but in many cases it doesn't.  That is because implementers delay paying fees until a c...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert On 5 March 2024, I wrote in  Patents: a New Resource Hub on Standard Essential Patents in May and HMG's other Proposals on FRAND Licensing   that the IPO guidance document Standard Essential Patents: 2024 forward look  promised an online SEP Resource Hub by May 2024 which would be a repository of tools, guidance and other material designed to help SMEs navigate what the IPO called "the SEPs ecosystem." The guidance also promised signposting to dispute resolution procedures, information on patent pools, and court processes to resolve disputes. Possibly because an election was called in May the resource hub's launch was delayed until 22 July 2024. It is now up and running and can be accessed at  https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/seps-resource-hub on the Intellectual Property Office ("IPO") website.   The best place to start is the IPO press release  One-stop SEPs Resource Hub launched by UK IPO  ...

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...