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Re: [PP-DIALOG] IEEE-SA Standards Board Patent Committee - Ad Hoc DRAFT Call for Patents Slide Set - Review/Comment Period



 

Hi Michael,

 

Thanks for your comments.  The language in question was the subject of extensive discussion in the 2007 time period.  Predecessors of yours at Qualcomm participated in those discussions, which were extensive.  If there is some new legal development in antitrust law that suggests to you that we need to re-open the discussion, then you should certainly make IEEE counsel aware of that development.  If not, then if we go down the road you suggest, I predict, based on experience, we will be embarking on a long and contentious process.  To pick one example, it may not surprise you to learn that I was not a fan of the sub-bullet regarding technical considerations being primary, because I believed then, and still believe, that participants in a working group ought to be able to take licensing cost considerations into account as they evaluate competing technical proposals.  It is not the role of IEEE-SA to tell them how to rank cost considerations versus technical considerations.  I did not win that fight way back in 2007.  But should you wish to reopen the discussion of the antitrust slide, I am happy to try again.

 

Best regards,

 

Gil Ohana

 

From: Michael Atlass [mailto:matlass@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2017 10:08 AM
To: PP-DIALOG@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [PP-DIALOG] IEEE-SA Standards Board Patent Committee - Ad Hoc DRAFT Call for Patents Slide Set - Review/Comment Period

 

Dear David Ringle and PP-DIALOG participants,

 

As discussion of any sort of pricing information discussion is fraught with antitrust concerns, when I re-read the slides, I thought better of the information points and subpoints allowing discussion of patent licensing costs as it was written in the draft we received (Slide #3).

 

In order to avoid potential for facilitating licensee price collusion (e.g. having a group of participants insist on a price for a royalty to let a particular technical approach or offering into a standard), I think that the legitimate discussion of the effect of potential patent costs on choices of technological approaches can be handled with less danger with some wording change.

 

Am proposing to reposition the sub-bullet and use the following language. (It’s in the attached slide).

 

        Don’t discuss specific license rates, terms, or conditions.

        However, relative general costs and benefits (merits) of different technical approaches including relative costs of patent licensing terms, relative difficulty of implementation and other similar relevant considerations may be discussed in standards development meetings

        Technical considerations must remain the primary focus

 

Best regards,

 

Michael.

 

 

From: Dave Ringle [mailto:d.ringle@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2017 1:03 PM
To: PP-DIALOG@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [PP-DIALOG] IEEE-SA Standards Board Patent Committee - Ad Hoc DRAFT Call for Patents Slide Set - Review/Comment Period

 

Dear All,

 

As you may be aware, there is a PatCom Ad Hoc that has taken on the review of the current Call for Patents slides. Please see 5.3 at http://standards.ieee.org/about/sasb/patcom/0617patmins.pdf for background.

 

The current Call for Patents slides are available online at https://development.standards.ieee.org/myproject/Public/mytools/mob/slideset.pdf

 

The Ad Hoc's draft slides are attached to this email.

 

The Ad Hoc is conducting a review/comment period. If you have any comments on the draft slides, please send an email to Dave Ringle (d.ringle@xxxxxxxx), PatCom Administrator.

 

The comment period will close on 03 November.

 

Regards, 

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David L. Ringle
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IEEE Standards Association
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