We explore potential methods for assessing whether licensing terms for intellectual property declared essential within a standard setting organization can be considered fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND). We first consider extending Georgia-Pacific to a standard setting context. We...

This paper studies the effects of a Standard Setting Organization (SSO) imposing a licensing cap for patents incorporated into a standard. In particular, we evaluate the \Incremental Value" rule as a way to reward firms that contribute technology to a standard. This rule has been proposed as a...

Under the legal doctrine of first sale, or patent exhaustion, a patent holder's ability to license multiple parties along a production chain is restricted. How and when such restrictions should be applied is a controversial issue, as evidenced by the Supreme Court's granting certiorari in the...

RAND commitments—i.e., promises to license on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms— play a key role in standard setting processes. However, the usefulness of those commitments has recently been questioned. The problem allegedly lies in the absence of a generally agreed test to determine...

A few recent contributions to the literature have claimed that in high-tech industries -- where innovation is often cumulative and products include many components protected by patents held by many different patent holders – the cost of obtaining all necessary licenses is too high. Some have...