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An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. "When a court employs the extraordinary remedy of injunction, it directs the conduct of a party, and does so with the backing of its full coercive powers." A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties, including possible monetary sanctions and even imprisonment. They can also be charged with contempt of court. Counterinjunctions are injunctions that stop or reverse the enforcement of another injunction.
A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, libraries, user interface, or algorithm.
In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs. Lock-in costs that create barriers to market entry may result in antitrust action against a monopoly.
European competition law is the competition law in use within the European Union. It promotes the maintenance of competition within the European Single Market by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies to ensure that they do not create cartels and monopolies that would damage the interests of society.
The Rainbow Books are a collection of CD format specifications.
Predatory pricing is a pricing strategy, using the method of undercutting on a larger scale, where a dominant firm in an industry will deliberately reduce its prices of a product or service to loss-making levels in the short-term. The aim is that existing or potential competitors within the industry will be forced to leave the market, as they will be unable to effectively compete with the dominant firm without making a loss. Once competition has been eliminated, the dominant firm now with having a majority share of the market can then raise their prices to monopoly levels in the long-term to recoup their losses.
Rambus Incorporated, founded in 1990, is an American technology company that designs, develops and licenses chip interface technologies and architectures that are used in digital electronics products. The company is well known for inventing RDRAM and for its intellectual property-based litigation following the introduction of DDR-SDRAM memory.
Reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms, also known as fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, denote a voluntary licensing commitment that standards organizations often request from the owner of an intellectual property right that is, or may become, essential to practice a technical standard. Put differently, a F/RAND commitment is a voluntary agreement between the standard-setting organization and the holder of standard-essential patents. U.S. courts, as well as courts in other jurisdictions, have found that, in appropriate circumstances, the implementer of a standard—that is, a firm or entity that uses a standard to render a service or manufacture a product—is an intended third-party beneficiary of the FRAND agreement, and, as such, is entitled to certain rights conferred by that agreement.
Competition law is a law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as anti-monopoly law in China and Russia. In previous years it has been known as trade practices law in the United Kingdom and Australia. In the European Union, it is referred to as both antitrust and competition law.
This is a list of legal terms relating to patents. A patent is not a right to practice or use the invention, but a territorial right to exclude others from commercially exploiting the invention, granted to an inventor or his successor in rights in exchange to a public disclosure of the invention.
Microsoft Corp. v. Commission (2007) T-201/04 is a case brought by the European Commission of the European Union (EU) against Microsoft for abuse of its dominant position in the market. It started as a complaint from Sun Microsystems over Microsoft's licensing practices in 1993, and eventually resulted in the EU ordering Microsoft to divulge certain information about its server products and release a version of Microsoft Windows without Windows Media Player. The European Commission especially focused on the interoperability issue.
Market dominance is a measure of the strength of a brand, product, service, or firm, relative to competitive offerings, exemplified by controlling a large proportion of the power in a particular market. Dominant positioning is both a legal concept and an economic concept and the distinction between the two is important when determining whether a firm's market position is dominant.
Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union is aimed at preventing undertakings who hold a dominant position in a market from abusing that position. Its core role is the regulation of monopolies, which restrict competition in private industry and produce worse outcomes for consumers and society. It is the second key provision, after Article 101, in TFEU competition law. The text of Article 102 provides the following,
Any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position within the internal market or in a substantial part of it shall be prohibited as incompatible with the internal market in so far as it may affect trade between Member States."
Such abuse may, in particular, consist in:
Microsoft has been involved in numerous high-profile legal matters that involved litigation over the history of the company, including cases against the United States, the European Union, and competitors.
Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., 553 U.S. 617 (2008), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court reaffirmed the validity of the patent exhaustion doctrine, and in doing so made uncertain the continuing precedential value of a line of decisions in the Federal Circuit that had sought to limit Supreme Court exhaustion doctrine decisions to their facts and to require a so-called "rule of reason" analysis of all post-sale restrictions other than tie-ins and price fixes. In the course of restating the patent exhaustion doctrine, the Court held that the exhaustion doctrine is triggered by, among other things, an authorized sale of a component when the only reasonable and intended use of the component is to practice the patent and the component substantially embodies the patented invention by embodying its essential features. The Court also overturned, in passing, the part of decision below that held that the exhaustion doctrine was limited to product claims and did not apply to method claims.
The Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority (JCRA) is the Competition regulator in Jersey, postal and telecommunications regulatory authority for Jersey, a British Crown Dependency off the coast of NormandyFrance.
Microsoft Corp. v. Motorola Inc., 696 F.3d 872 was a United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit case about Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) Licensing and foreign anti-suit injunction.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to patents:
Princo Corp. v. ITC, 616 F.3d 1318 was a 2010 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, that sought to narrow the defense of patent misuse to claims for patent infringement. Princo held that a party asserting the defense of patent misuse, absent a case of so-called per se misuse, must prove both "leveraging" of the patent being enforced against it and a substantial anticompetitive effect outside the legitimate scope of that patent right. In so ruling, the court emphasized that the misuse alleged must involve the patent in suit, not another patent.
Deutsche Telekom AG v Commission (2010) C-280/08 is a European competition law case relevant for UK enterprise law, concerning telecommunications.
References
- ↑ Joseph Straus, "Patent Application: Obstacle for Innovation and Abuse of Dominant Position under Article 102 TFEU?", Journal of European Competition Law & Practice (2010) 1 (3): 189-201, footnote 71.
- ↑ Mark Schweizer, "Dutch see Orange Book differently; Philips prevails again", IPKat, March 18, 2010.
