Position Paper on the Revised rules for the assessment of horizontal cooperation agreements under EU competition law

Francois Levêque

Description

Niveau: Supérieur
Position Paper on the Revised rules for the assessment of horizontal cooperation agreements under EU competition law Response to the Public Consultation of the European Commission, DG Competition Prof. Francois Lévêque, Cerna Mines ParisTech Justus Baron, Cerna Mines ParisTech Cerna, Mines ParisTech is a research centre in Industrial Economics. Over the last years, Cerna has carried through various research programs on the interplay between technological standards and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Building upon this experience, we wish to comment on those parts of the proposed guidelines for applying European Competition Law to Horizontal Cooperation agreements that are relevant to the setting of technological standards. 1. It is important and very positive that the European Commission (EC) has clarified its stance on standardization agreements; and especially that patents are now explicitly taken into account. We welcome that the EC now explicitly mentions technology markets as relevant markets for assessing the competitive effects of standardization agreements. Technology markets are markets where owners of proprietary technology offer their technology for sale or for licensing. Licensing agreements play an especially important role in the context of standardization, as one of the objectives of standardization is to encourage the spread and wide use of the technology, while Intellectual Property Rights such as patents are generally often used for excluding use of the technology by others.

• effort can


• competitive standardization


• patent pool


• competition law


• standardization


• standardization agreements


• licensing agreements play


• technology markets


• can raise

Sujets

• Maladie de Menière
• Swanson
• Lévêque
• Qualcomm
• Shapiro
• Patent pool
• Competition law
• Standardization

Informations

• Publié par: chaeh
• Nombre de lectures: 15
• Langue: English

Extrait

Position Paper on the Revised rules for the assessment of horizontal cooperation agreements under EU competition law Response to the Public Consultation of the European Commission, DG Competition Prof. Francois Lévêque, Cerna Mines ParisTech Justus Baron, Cerna Mines ParisTech Cerna, Mines ParisTech is a research centre in Industrial Economics. Over the last years, Cerna has carried through various research programs on the interplay between technological standards and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Building upon this experience, we wish to comment on those parts of the proposed guidelines for applying European Competition Law to Horizontal Cooperation agreements that are relevant to the setting of technological standards. 1.It is important and very positive that the European Commission (EC) has clarified its stance on standardization agreements; and especially that patents are now explicitly taken into account. We welcome that the EC now explicitly mentions technology markets as relevant markets for assessing the competitive effects of standardization agreements. Technology markets are markets where owners of proprietary technology offer their technology for sale or for licensing. Licensing agreements play an especially important role in the context of standardization, as one of the objectives of standardization is to encourage the spread and wide use of the technology, while Intellectual Property Rights such as patents are generally often used for excluding use of the technology by others. Licensing of technology allows reconciling the objectives of standards and Intellectual Property Rights. Technology markets are crucially affected by standardization, and the analysis of the effects of standardization on competition between technologies is a complex issues for which indeed some guidance is warranted. The failure to take these effects into account (no mention in the previous version of the effects of standardization on technology markets and on the