IP finance: June 2026

Tuesday, 16 June 2026

Join Online: 14th Intellectual Property and Competition Forum The Global Patent Chess Game: International Patent Strategy in a Fragmented World Order 23–24 June 2026 | Munich & Online

The 14th IP & Competition Forum offers a series of highly topical online sessions on the changing architecture of global patent litigation, enforcement, licensing and competition policy.

Injunctions at the Centre of Gravity in Global Patent Strategy
23 June 2026 | 08:30 London time

Moderator
Otto Licks, Founding Partner, Licks Attorneys

Speakers
Dr Thomas Dreiser, Chief IP Litigation Counsel, EMEA, Huawei
Chris Longman, Vice President, Legal Counsel, Qualcomm
Tom Brown, Head of IP Litigation, Dell
Lara Rogers, Head of IP Disputes, Amazon

Long-Arm Jurisdiction in Patent Disputes after BSH Hausgeräte v. Electrolux
23 June 2026 | 09:30 London time

Moderator
Dr Constanze Krenz, Partner, DLA Piper

Speakers
Dr Corin Gittinger, Partner, Freshfields
Alessandro Orsi, VP Legal, Associate General Counsel IP, HP
Dr Clemens Heusch, VP, Head of Global Litigation and Disputes, Nokia
Gerhard Tschiedel, IP Transactions Manager, Giesecke+Devrient

Competition Perspectives, LNGs, Standards & Patent Licensing
23 June 2026 | 15:00 London time

Moderator
Le Chen, Senior Director, IP Policy & Dispute Resolution

Speakers
Paul Bridgeland, Policy Officer, DG Competition, European Commission
Dr Felix Engelsing, Director, Bundeskartellamt
Dr Thomas Buchholz, Senior Expert Digital IP, BSH Hausgeräte GmbH
Alexander Prenter, Policy Director, Fair Standards Alliance
Collette Rawnsley, VP, IP Policy & Advocacy, Nokia

China: Litigation, Licensing & Global Influence
24 June 2026 | 07:30 London time

Keynote
Dr Juan He — Judge, Intellectual Property Court, Supreme People’s Court of China

Moderator
Jing Xu, Partner, King & Wood

Speakers
Na Wei, GM of Corporate Business Development & IP Strategy, Xiaomi
Vivienne Li, Head of Patent Licensing, ByteDance
Collette Rawnsley, VP, IP Policy & Advocacy, Nokia
Dylan Li, Head of European IPR Department, Huawei

Courts & Rate Setting
24 June 2026 | 11:00 London time

Keynote
Fabian Hoffmann — Judge, German Supreme Court

Moderator
Jeffrey Blumenfeld, Competition and Policy Counsel, Access Advance

Speakers
Shuang Cheng, Cellular Licensing Lead, Xiaomi
Michele Baccelli, Partner, Hoffmann Eitle

UPC and EPO Case Law: Convergence, Divergence and Practical Consequences — Novelty, Inventive Step & Added Matter
24 June 2026 | 14:00 London time

Practitioner Speakers
Dr Natalia Wegner, Partner, Carpmaels & Ransford
Bernhard Thum, Partner, Thum & Partner

Judge Speakers
Dr Stefan Wilhelm — Judge, Unified Patent Court
Dr Christoph Schober — Judge, Unified Patent Court
Dr Kemal Bengi — Chair of the Board of Appeal 3.5.05, European Patent Office

Judges’ Perspectives on International Understanding in Patent Disputes
24 June 2026 | 15:45 London time

Speakers
Prof. Peter Meier-Beck — Presiding Judge (ret.) & UPC Advisory Committee, German Supreme Court / Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
Judge Victor Torres — Judge, Court of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Dr Juan He — Judge, Intellectual Property Court, Supreme People’s Court of China

These sessions address some of the most important questions in international patent enforcement today: injunctions as tools of global leverage, cross-border patent enforcement, long-arm jurisdiction, forum strategy, SEPs, FRAND, standards, patent licensing, competition policy, China’s growing influence, rate setting, UPC and EPO case law, and international judicial understanding in patent disputes.

The Forum brings together judicial perspectives from the German Supreme Court, the Unified Patent Court, the European Patent Office Boards of Appeal, the Supreme People’s Court of China, the Court of Rio de Janeiro and the Landgericht Munich, alongside leading voices from industry, patent offices, competition authorities, private practice and academia.

Patrons include: Licks Attorneys, Hogan Lovells, Nokia, RPX, Freshfields and Vossius Brinkhof.

More information: https://www.oxfora.org
Contact: info@oxfirst.com

FRAND commitments include no right to a platform licence

In my recent article, Are patent pool royalty rates FRAND?, I argued that patent pool and platform rates are structurally unsuited to serve as benchmarks for bilateral FRAND licensing. That analysis focused on pricing (i.e. royalty rates) — specifically, on the risk of inferring inapplicable rates from fundamentally different licensing arrangements.

This article addresses a logically prior question now before the England and Wales (“UK”) Supreme Court in Tesla v InterDigital / Avanci: Before any court determines whether a platform licence is FRAND, does it have jurisdiction and is there any entitlement to have those terms determined in court?

That question is not merely procedural. It goes to the meaning and scope of FRAND.

The point is not that platform rates are “sub-FRAND” or otherwise deficient. On the contrary, they may be entirely FRAND within their own commercial context. The point is that FRAND operates through different processes in different licensing structures, and those processes should not be conflated.

FRAND does not necessarily include a right to a platform licence. Recognising that preserves both the integrity of the ETSI undertaking and the legitimacy of alternative licensing institutions developed by the market.

My full 5-page article can be downloaded here.

Tuesday, 2 June 2026

Are patent pool royalty rates FRAND?

This question sits at the intersection of licensing practice, competition policy, and judicial interpretation. Courts, regulators, and industry participants often look to patent pools for guidance in determining FRAND[1] rates. Yet doing so risks a fundamental mistake. Patent pool rates — whether characterised as FRAND, sub‑FRAND,[2] or otherwise — are structurally unsuited to serve as benchmarks for bilateral licensing.

I asked several attendees this headline question at the recent Patents and Standards conference in London — in informal conversations during coffee breaks. I also posed the question to fellow panellists there in our session entitled Platforms and Pools: Where Next? While Sisvel panellist Matteo Sabattini was proud to inform us emphatically that courts had found patent pool Sisvel’s rates FRAND, most others answered equivocally.

This question is also under consideration by the UK Supreme Court. In December 2023, Tesla raised proceedings seeking, among other requests, a declaration of FRAND terms for a license to SEPs in the Avanci 5G Platform. Before opining on FRAND terms, the UKSC must determine if those are applicable in that case.

There’s extensive effective and efficient SEP licensing based on FRAND commitments — bilaterally and in patent pools. However, pool rates are typically below bilateral FRAND rates for various reasons. For example, pooling is well-known to reduce transaction costs and so these savings can be passed on in lower royalty rates.

Pooling rates that might be considered sub-FRAND in bilateral licensing shouldn’t be deemed a breach of SEP owners’ FRAND commitments. Voluntarily offering relatively low royalty rates non-discriminately is not harmful to any licensee. Similarly, unilaterally offering licensing to all royalty-free is also harmless.

As patent pool terms are generally regarded as FRAND it should be accepted that the range of FRAND rates might be very large, given the various other differences in licensing structure and terms versus bilateral licensing.

Alternatively, perhaps Standard-Setting Organisations (SSOs) and others should regard collective licensing including patent pooling as another, distinctly different kind of licensing arrangement to bilateral licensing — just as royalty-free is already recognised as distinct from FRAND licensing by some SSOs?[3]

Either way, patent pool rates are inapplicable benchmarks for bilateral licensing — and vice versa — in the same way that the existence of royalty-free patent pooling should not impose that pricing as an obligation on SEP owners who choose not to join such an arrangement.[4]

My full article can be downloaded, here.

[1] Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) is generally regarded as being the same as Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND).

[2] This contentious term seems to describe rates that fall below the range that would be considered suitable FRAND benchmarks in bilateral licensing determinations. See subsequent section on UK High Court Judgment in Samsung v. ZTE.

[3] The Patent Policies of IEEE SA and ITU-T/ITU-R/ISO/IEC accommodate “without compensation” and “free of charge”, respectively, (i.e. royalty-free) as well as RAND licensing.

[4] Bluetooth SIG participation requires reciprocal, “without compensation” (i.e. royalty‑free) cross‑licensing. Google and others have asserted that open source video codecs including VP8, VP9 and AV1 can be implemented without paying any license fees to anyone. Nevertheless, various patents that are not available royalty-free read on those standards. Google paid off pool administrator MPEG LA so that free proposition could be maintained for VP8 implementers. Sisvel offers a licensing platform for patents essential to VP9.