In dealing with applications for injunctive relief by the holders of FRAND-encumbered SEPs in the course of protracted licensing negotiations, any legal system faces the challenge of reaching the proper balance between predictability for stakeholders and differentiation between possible...

In this article, the authors review the relationship between the Commission, the national regulatory authorities (NRAs) and national courts in light of the Commission's proposals for reform as laid out in the 2006 Review. They focus upon the Article 7 and Article 4 procedures of directive...

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the governance of standard development organizations (SDOs), with a particular emphasis on organizations developing standards for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The analysis is based on 17 SDO case studies, a survey of SDO...

Standardization may allow the owners of standard-essential patents to charge royalty rates exceeding those that would have been negotiated ex ante. In practice, however, standard-setting efforts are often characterized by repeated interaction and complementarities among technologies. These...

This report proposes some recommendations for a robust regulation of digital networks and services in the European Union. In particular, the report recommends: (i) to abandon separate legislative silos for the internet, audiovisual media and electronic communications and replace them with one...

The recent decision of the District Court of the Northern District of California, in NSS Labs. v. Symantec sheds light on the requirement that Standard Development Organizations (SDO) achieve a balance of interests in their procedures. Whilst the court ultimately did not rule on this point, the...

This article puts the judgment of the EC Court of First Instance (CFI) in Microsoft in perspective and links it with the ongoing discussion on competition policy and innovation. It also replies to some claims made by Ahlborn and Evans in their piece on the same judgment...

This paper seeks to assess exactly where and how the network neutrality discussion taking place in the United States is relevant in the EU context, and thus where Europeans should be concerned. Secondly, where there is a concern, it looks to EC law to ascertain whether it already provides a...

Part of a larger textbook on business law and economics, this Chapter surveys how economic analysis has been applied to competition, or antitrust, law, in the main jurisdictions on both sides of the Atlantic. The first part chronicles the successive schools of thought in the US and the EU, with...