It has long been recognized in Europe and elsewhere that standards-development organizations (SDOs) may adopt policies that require their participants to license patents essential to the SDO’s standards (standards-essential patents or SEPs) to manufacturers of standardized products...

Almost every product sold today must conform to standards, whether relating to its design, manufacture, operation, testing, safety, sale or disposal, and sometimes to many of these at once. At their root, standards are no more than written requirements or design features of a product, service or...

On May 5, 2021, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced that the U.S. would support a “waiver of IP protections on COVID-19 vaccines to help end the pandemic” currently being discussed at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The unprecedented U.S. support of the proposed WTO IP...