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TOTM In late June, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter arguing that the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) needs to investigate the . . .
In late June, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter arguing that the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) needs to investigate the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and its local power companies (LPCs) on grounds that abuses of the pole-attachment process appear to be slowing broadband deployment.
Read the full piece here.
ICLE Issue Brief I. Introduction As part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), signed by President Joe Biden in November 2021, Congress provided $42.5 billion for . . .
As part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), signed by President Joe Biden in November 2021, Congress provided $42.5 billion for broadband deployment, mapping, and adoption projects through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, with the stated goal of directing the funds to close the so-called “digital divide.”[1] But actions by pole owners—such as refusing to allow broadband companies to attach their lines on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms—threaten to slow broadband deployment significantly.
In a recent letter to Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) put forth the argument that the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) should take action to address abuses of the pole-attachment process by local power companies (LPCs) regulated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).[2] His concern is that such abuses threaten to slow broadband deployment, especially to rural areas served by the TVA and the LPCs.[3] Among the abuses he details are:
Section 224 of the Communications Act exempts municipal and electric-cooperative (“coop”) pole owners, such as the LPCs, from oversight by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).[5] At the same time, the TVA’s authority over pole attachments is not subject to oversight by state governments.[6] This loophole means that it is the TVA, not the FCC, that sets the rates for pole attachments. The TVA’s rates are significantly higher than those of the FCC, [7] and the TVA’s LPCs often are able to avoid the access requirements that states and the FCC typically require.[8]
But avoiding state and FCC regulatory oversight is not the only loophole that the TVA and its LPCs can exploit: the TVA and the government-owned LPCs also may not be subject to antitrust law. These entities hold a resource critical for broadband deployment, while it is essentially impossible for private providers to build competing pole infrastructure. In situations like this, government entities that participate as firms in the marketplace—known in the literature as “state-owned enterprises” (SOEs)—should be subject to antitrust law in order to ensure access by private competitors.
Sen. Lee is correct that the DOJ should examine the practices of the TVA and its LPCs under antitrust law. Antitrust clearly applies to those LPCs that are private coops, which have no immunities. But Congress should clarify that the TVA and government-owned LPCs are likewise subject to antitrust law when they act according to their “commercial functions” or as “market participants.” They should also consider bringing the TVA and all of its LPCs under the purview of the FCC’s Section 224 authority over pole attachments.
SOEs’ incentives differ from those of privately owned businesses. Most notably, while a private business must pass the profit-and-loss test, SOEs often are not subject to the same constraints. This difference may manifest through setting up legal SOE monopolies against which no other firm can compete; exempting SOEs from otherwise generally applicable laws; extending explicit subsidies to SOEs, whether in the form of taxpayer-financed appropriations or government-backed bonds (which the government explicitly or implicitly promises to repay, if necessary); or cross-subsidies from other government-owned monopoly businesses.
As a result, SOEs do not need to maximize profits (with Armen Alchian’s caveat that private market participants may be modeled as profit maximizers even if that isn’t their true motivation[9]) and can pursue other goals. In fact, this is exactly why some supporters of SOEs like them so much: they can pursue the so-called “public interest” by providing ostensibly high-quality products and services at what are often below-market prices.[10]
But this freedom comes at a cost: not only can SOEs inefficiently allocate societal resources away from their highest-valued uses, but they may actually have greater incentive to abuse their positions in the marketplace than private entities. As David E.M. Sappington and J. Gregory Sidak put it:
[W]hen an SOE values an expanded scale of operation in addition to profit, it will be less concerned than its private, profit-maximizing counterpart with the extra costs associated with increased output. Consequently, even though an SOE may value the profit that its anticompetitive activities can generate less highly than does a private profit-maximizing firm, the SOE may still find it optimal to pursue aggressively anticompetitive activities that expand its own output and revenue. To illustrate, the SOE might set the price it charges for a product below its marginal cost of production, particularly if the product is one for which demand increases substantially as price declines. If prohibitions on below-cost pricing are in effect, an SOE may have a strong incentive to understate its marginal cost of production or to over-invest in fixed operating costs so as to reduce variable operating costs. A public enterprise may also often have stronger incentives than a private, profit-maximizing firm to raise its rivals’ cost and to undertake activities designed to exclude competitors from the market because these activities can expand the scale and scope of the SOE’s operations.[11]
Here, entities like the TVA and many of the government-owned LPCs that sell the electricity it produces are simply not subject to the same profit-and-loss test that a private power company would be. But even more importantly for the discussion of broadband buildout, many of these government-owned LPCs also provide broadband services (or intend to), effectively using their position as a monopoly provider of electricity to cross-subsidize their entry into the broadband marketplace. Moreover, LPCs often own the electric poles and control decisions about whether and at what rates to rent them to third parties (subject to TVA rate regulations), including to private broadband providers that may compete with the LPCs’ municipal-broadband offerings.
This raises two significant issues for competition policy:
In Verizon Communication Inc. v. Law Offices of Curtis V. Trinko LLP,[13] the U.S. Supreme Court explained the reasoning behind a very limited duty to deal under antitrust law:
Compelling… firms to share the source of their advantage is in some tension with the underlying purpose of antitrust law, since it may lessen the incentive for the monopolist, the rival, or both to invest in those economically beneficial facilities.[14]
In sum, a private market participant is constantly looking to acquire monopoly power by innovating and better serving customers, and temporary monopolies—acquired through a legitimate competitive process—are not unlawful. If successful, this process provides incentive for more innovation and competition, including incentives for competitors to build their own infrastructure.
But this is not so when it comes to SOEs, which can prevent competition in a way that private market participants cannot, due to their special access to legal mechanisms like eminent domain, taxes, below-market-rate loans, government grants of indefinite monopolies, and cross-subsidies from their own monopolies in adjacent markets. As a result, SOEs possess both special ability and incentive to raise rivals’ costs through refusals to deal or predatory pricing.
Ironically, the lack of a profit motive may make SOEs uniquely positioned to harm competition. Thus, it may make sense to impose on SOEs a duty to deal on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms when it comes to pole attachments.
According to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the trade association for rural electricity co-ops (RECs):
There are some important differences between electric co-ops and investor-owned power companies. Most importantly, co-ops are owned by their consumers. Economics helps explain why this form of organization could be pro-competitive in some situations, but the history of RECs suggests that government support and corporate rules particular to co-ops are the main reasons that we continue to rely on co-ops to distribute electricity in rural areas of the United States. As a result, RECs—especially those that distribute electricity generated and transmitted by the TVA—have incentives more like those of state-owned enterprises (SEOs) than private firms.
In other words, RECs also have the incentive and ability to act anticompetitively—e.g., by refusing to deal with private broadband providers who wish to attach to the poles they own.
The classic law & economics examination of firms’ choice of business organization comes from Henry Hansmann, in his book The Ownership of Enterprise.[17] He explained that the choice of ownership for any firm is driven by costs. The form that is chosen by a particular firm is that which “minimizes the total costs of transactions between the firm and all of its patrons.”[18] These costs include both transaction costs with those patrons who are not owners, and the costs of ownership, such as monitoring and controlling the firm.
Hansmann argued that the form of consumer-owned co-ops predominates in the distribution of electricity in rural areas because it is a response to the threat of natural monopoly, where high barriers to entry and startup costs suggest that one firm is likely to dominate.[19] This is particularly true in geographic areas with low population density, because the costs of building out infrastructure is extremely high per individual consumer. As such, consumers would likely be subject “to serious price exploitation if they were to rely on market contracting with an investor-owned firm.”[20] Thus, the choice is among rate regulation of an investor-owned utility, municipal ownership, or consumer ownership through a co-op.
Hansmann argued that consumer co-ops best align “the firm’s interests with those of its consumers” because they have lower overall costs than other forms of ownership in rural areas.[21] This is because electricity is a “highly homogeneous [commodity] with few important quality variables that affect different users differently.”[22] Moreover, relatively stable farm and nonfarm residential households account for the overwhelming majority of the membership and demand for electricity in rural areas, “creating a dominant group of patrons with relatively homogenous interests.”[23]
As a result, the costs of monitoring and controlling these natural monopolies are relatively lower for the consumers as owners than they would be as citizens overseeing a public utility commission in charge of regulating an investor-owned utility, or a board in charge of a municipally owned utility.
On the other hand, the history of RECs suggests that their formation and persistence may be more due to government intervention than as a market response to consumer demand. As Hansmann himself recognized, RECs received significant public subsidies in the form of below-market loans from the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), though he argues that these loans were not significant subsidies for the first 15 years); exemption from federal corporate income tax; and preferential access to power generated by the TVA.[24] On top of that, the REA essentially organized many co-ops in their early days.[25]
Nonetheless, Hansmann argues:
These subsidies have undoubtedly been important in encouraging the formation and growth of cooperative utilities, and therefore the great proliferation of rural electric cooperatives does not provide an unbiased test of the viability of the cooperative form. Evidently, however, the federal subsidies have not been critical to the success of cooperatives in the electric power industry. Even before the federal programs were enacted, there already existed forty-six rural electric cooperatives operating in thirteen different states. Also, as already noted, there was no net interest subsidy to the cooperatives for the first fifteen years of the REA. And in its early years, the REA also offered low-interest loans to investor-owned utilities that wished to extend service into rural areas, but found little interest in these loans among the latter firms.[26]
In an excellent 2018 law-review article, however, Debra C. Jeter, Randall S. Thomas, & Harwell Wells systematically detail the great lengths to which the REA went to organize co-ops in rural areas.[27] The authors convincingly argue that the co-op model was not adopted as a market response, but primarily due to the REA’s organizational efforts and the subsidies bestowed upon them.
Even if RECs were a market response to natural monopoly in rural areas at the time of their adoption, that does not mean that they would necessarily continue to be the most economically efficient model. At a given point of time, economies of scale and high costs of entry may mean that the market can only support one firm (i.e., natural monopoly). But over the last 80-90 years, underlying conditions that may have made co-ops the most efficient model may have changed. As we argued in a 2021 white paper:
[I]n any given market at a given time, there is likely some optimal number of firms that maximizes social welfare. That optimal number—which is sometimes just one and is never the maximum possible—is subject to change, as technological shocks affect the dominant paradigms controlling the market. The optimal number of firms also varies with the strength of scale economies, such that consumers may benefit from an increase in concentration if economies of scale are strong enough… And it is important to remember that the market process itself is not static. When factors change—whether a change in demographics or population density, or other exogenous shocks that change the cost of deployment—there will be corresponding changes in available profit opportunities. Thus, while there is a hypothetical equilibrium for each market—the point at which the entry of a new competitor could reduce consumer welfare—it is best to leave entry determinations to the market process.[28]
In fact, as Jeter, Thomas, & Wells go on to argue, rules particular to the co-op model make it nearly impossible to change the form of ownership through merger or acquisition.[29] These rules—adopted as part of the model acts promoted by the REA—prevent what the great Henry Manne called “the market for corporate control” that would otherwise discipline co-op managers.[30]
As has been noted by even the strongest supporters of the co-op model[31]—and seemingly undermining Hansmann’s assessment that consumer-ownership is the most effective form of organization for these entities—RECs suffer from a lack of oversight by consumer-owners, with very few ever showing up to even vote for their board of directors:
[32]
This lack of oversight from the ownership means that the board of directors can engage in all kinds of abuses, as detailed extensively by Jeter, Thomas, & Wells.[33]
Without sufficient incentives for oversight by consumer-owners or a functioning market for corporate control, there is no basis to conclude that RECs remain the best business model for distributing electricity. Their ubiquity is more due to the REA’s organizational efforts and ongoing government benefits—in the form of subsidies, tax exemptions, and preferences from the TVA—than market demand.
Due to the privileged position enjoyed by RECs, particularly those that distribute electricity from the TVA, they have a unique ability and incentive to act anticompetitively toward broadband providers that want to attach to the poles they own.
Much like municipally owned electricity distributors, RECs are not motivated solely by profit maximization. RECs also have similar advantages, like access to eminent domain, below-market loans, tax exemptions, and the ability to cross-subsidize entry into a new market (like broadband) from its dominant position in electricity distribution.
On the other hand, unlike municipally owned electricity distributors, RECs can go out of business, and thus must earn sufficient revenues to remain a going concern. This means that the incentives for RECs to act anticompetitively are at least as strong as those of investor-owned firms, and may be even as strong as those of state-owned enterprises. This is especially notable, when so many RECs either have entered or are planning to enter the broadband market.
In such cases, there are strong incentives for RECs to refuse to deal with private broadband providers that are trying to deploy in—and introduce competition to—their rural areas, as Sen. Lee’s (R-Utah) recent letter to the U.S. Justice Department suggests, many of these co-ops have done exactly that.[34]
The economic logic that drives a limited duty to deal under antitrust law is that enforced sharing rarely makes sense because it reduces the incentives to build infrastructure. [35] But creating new rural infrastructure (like poles) is cost-prohibitive—at least, without the same subsidies, eminent-domain power, and other advantages that RECs have historically enjoyed. Thus, RECs may rightfully have a duty to deal with broadband providers on a reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis.
Moreover, many RECs receive little oversight from rate regulators when it comes to pole attachments. And when they do, like those RECs that distribute electricity from the TVA, the formula allows for much higher rates than the FCC would allow.[36] As a result, pole costs are much higher for broadband companies dealing with poles owned by co-ops and municipalities that are not subject to the FCC’s authority (see Figure II).[37]
There is, however, a complication. In his letter to the DOJ, Sen. Lee rightly complains that:
TVA’s regulatory practices enable such behavior: there is no reason why TVA’s regulation of the pole rental rates charged by its LPCs requires TVA to somehow exempt those LPCs from generally-applicable rules that protect competition by requiring pole owners to provide pole access to third parties on reasonable terms. TVA should be using its authority over LPC distribution contracts to require LPCs to offer reasonable, non-discriminatory, and prompt pole access to third-party broadband providers (particularly recipients of taxpayer-funded broadband grants) in unserved areas, rather than giving its LPCs a free pass from those requirements.[38]
Unfortunately, while Lee’s letter is addressed to the DOJ’s antitrust chief, it isn’t clear whether antitrust laws even apply to the behavior he observes. This is primarily because of two legal doctrines: federal sovereign immunity from lawsuit and state-action immunity from antitrust.
Normally, the federal government is immune from lawsuit under the ancient (and deeply flawed[39]) doctrine of sovereign immunity, except where explicitly waived by statute. The TVA is a wholly owned corporate agency and instrumentality of the federal government. Thus, federal courts have typically found that the TVA and other federal entities operating in the marketplace are exempt from antitrust.[40] This is despite the fact that the TVA’s enabling statute states:
Except as otherwise specifically provided in this chapter, the Corporation… may sue and be sued in its corporate name.[41]
There is, needless to say, nothing in the chapter that actually says the agency can’t be sued for antitrust violations. The older cases finding the TVA to be exempt from antitrust are likely to be found wrongly decided under the logic of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent case dealing with TVA’s immunity from suit. In 2019, the Court took up Thacker v. TVA,[42] which asked whether the TVA was immune from lawsuits for negligence. The Court rejected the lower court’s reasoning that the TVA was immune for torts arising from its “discretionary functions,” substituting a new test as to whether the TVA was acting pursuant to its governmental function or a commercial function. As the Court stated:
Under the clause—and consistent with our precedents construing similar ones—the TVA is subject to suits challenging any of its commercial activities. The law thus places the TVA in the same position as a private corporation supplying electricity. But the TVA might have immunity from suits contesting one of its governmental activities, of a kind not typically carried out by private parties.[43]
The Court also gave examples to help distinguish the two:
When the TVA exercises the power of eminent domain, taking landowners’ property for public purposes, no one would confuse it for a private company. So too when the TVA exercises its law enforcement powers to arrest individuals. But in other operations—and over the years, a growing number—the TVA acts like any other company producing and supplying electric power. It is an accident of history, not a difference in function, that explains why most Tennesseans get their electricity from a public enterprise and most Virginians get theirs from a private one. Whatever their ownership structures, the two companies do basically the same things to deliver power to customers.[44]
The test to be applied, therefore, is “whether the conduct alleged to be negligent is governmental or commercial in nature… if the conduct is commercial—the kind of thing any power company might do—the TVA cannot invoke sovereign immunity.”[45] Here, that arguably means that, when the TVA is acting pursuant to its commercial function, it should not receive immunity from antitrust suit.
On the other hand, Congress gave the TVA broad ratemaking authority and contractual powers. One federal court (previous to Thacker) rejected an antitrust challenge to the TVA’s ratemaking formula because it was a “valid governmental action and [therefore] exempt from the antitrust laws of the United States.”[46]
As noted above, some LPCs have entered into the municipal-broadband market and act as competitors to private broadband companies who want to attach to poles owned by LPCs. Thus, even though competition economics would suggest that LPCs would have a greater incentive to raise rivals’ costs by charging a monopoly price, the TVA would likely argue that it is acting in its government function when it sets those rates.[47] If courts agree, then antitrust law would not be able to reach that problem.
Consistent with the Court’s reasoning in Thacker, however, courts could find that antitrust law reaches agreements between wholesalers (like the TVA) and retailers (like the LPCs) to charge certain rates for pole attachments to competitors in an adjacent market. This would arguably be an example of the TVA acting as any other power generator would, pursuant to its commercial function, through some type of price-maintenance agreement. As it stands, it isn’t clear which way the courts would go.
Congress should strongly consider clarifying that the TVA is not exempt from antitrust scrutiny when it acts pursuant to a commercial function, including when it sets anticompetitive rates for pole attachments that would slow broadband buildout. This clearly affects the market for access to LPC-owned utility poles.
Even if the commercial versus government distinction is clarified with respect to the TVA, there is a further wrinkle as it relates to antitrust scrutiny of LPCs. This concerns how the TVA’s actions interact with state-action immunity in antitrust law.
Grounded in the 10th Amendment, the Supreme Court has found there is immunity from antitrust laws for conduct that is the result of “state action.”[48] This doctrine has been interpreted to immunize anticompetitive conduct pursuant to state and local government action from antitrust claims, so long as “the State has articulated a clear … policy to allow the anticompetitive conduct, and second, the State provides active supervision of [the] anticompetitive conduct.”[49] When it comes to municipalities, however, the Court has found that “[o]nce it is clear that state authorization exists, there is no need to require the State to supervise actively the municipality’s execution of what is a properly delegated function.”[50]
The Supreme Court has also left open the possibility of an exception to state-action immunity when government entities themselves are acting as market participants.[51] In one case dealing with a local municipally owned power plant in Louisiana, the Supreme Court did not grant broad immunity from antitrust laws, in part because:
Every business enterprise, public or private, operates its business in furtherance of its own goals. In the case of a municipally owned utility, that goal is likely to be, broadly speaking, the benefit of its citizens. But the economic choices made by public corporations in the conduct of their business affairs, designed as they are to assure maximum benefits for the community constituency, are not inherently more likely to comport with the broader interest of national economic well-being than are those of private corporations acting in furtherance of the interests of the organization and its shareholders.[52]
While there are a few cases applying this distinction in lower federal courts,[53] there is no Supreme Court caselaw determining how to differentiate when, for the purposes of state-action immunity, municipal corporations act as market participants versus when they act as government entities. Jarod Bona and Luke Wake have proposed applying a test similar to the one the courts use in dormant Commerce Clause cases.[54] The distinction made by the Supreme Court in Thacker and discussed above may also be applicable.
Government-owned LPCs are creatures of states or municipalities. As such, they would certainly argue they are immune from antitrust scrutiny, even when they refuse to deal with private broadband providers with whom they compete while withholding a critical input (i.e., the ability to attach to their poles). But there are two problems with this argument.
First, it seems unlikely that the LPCs could argue that they are acting pursuant to a clearly articulated policy of displacing competition when they refuse to deal with broadband providers. As Sen. Lee pointed out in his letter, there are state laws that would impose a duty to deal on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, but for any exemptions to that authority due to the TVA.[55] For instance, North Carolina and Kentucky require all pole owners not subject to FCC Section 224 authority to offer nondiscriminatory pole access.[56]
On the other hand, they could appeal to the TVA’s contract authority,[57] in addition to the TVA’s stated policy that its purpose is “to provide for the … industrial development” of the Tennessee Valley.[58] But even if this grants the TVA authority to regulate rates for pole attachments, it doesn’t mean the TVA has enunciated an articulable policy of displacing competition in refusing to deal with broadband providers. It also would appear to be contrary to the purpose of promoting industrial development to forestall broadband deployment in the Tennessee Valley because LPCs that also have municipal-broadband systems don’t want that competition. In other words, their refusal to deal is not protected by an appeal to any articulable policy to displace competition, either by a state or the TVA.
Second, under the caselaw that does exist, government-owned LPCs are market participants that should not receive antitrust immunity. For instance, in one case, a private arena owner challenged under antitrust law an exclusive contract between a municipal-arena owner and LiveNation.[59] The court held that state-action immunity was “less justified” because the municipality’s “entertainment contracts” reflected “commercial market activity,” not “regulatory activity.”[60] Here, the LPCs’ actions as both power companies and municipal-broadband providers reflect commercial-market activity more than regulatory activity. They shouldn’t be able to claim immunity from antitrust for this refusal to deal, any more than a private broadband provider could.
In sum, the LPCs’ anticompetitive refusal to deal appears to be separate from the rates set by the TVA pursuant to its ratemaking authority or contractual powers. They should be subject to antitrust law. But due to uncertainty in this area, Congress should clarify that LPCs are not immune from antitrust scrutiny, and consider codifying the market-participant exception to state-action immunity in antitrust statutes.
In his letter, Sen. Lee noted that, under Section 224 of the Communications Act, “Congress determined that poles and conduits are essential facilities that lack a viable market-based alternative, which led it to require utilities to extend nondiscriminatory access to utility poles to cable operators and competitive telecommunications providers.”[61] While acknowledging that TVA distributors are not subject to Section 224, Lee argued that “the congressional conclusion that poles are essential facilities that lack a viable market-based alternative holds for all poles.”[62] Lee further noted that the “TVA’s regulation of its LPCs’ pole attachment rates also impedes competition by setting rates well above the rates set by the FCC and deemed compensatory by the U.S. Supreme Court, inflating the cost for competitive broadband providers unaffiliated with TVA LPCs to offer service.”[63]
Theoretically, government-owned LPCs and cooperative LPCs are subject to some oversight when they run services like municipal broadband, either from voters or member-owners. But it is implausible that such oversight can be truly effective, given that these pole owners are not subject to normal market incentives and have their own conflicts of interest that encourage hold-up problems. Combined with their ability to cross-subsidize operations in broadband from their electricity customers, it should be clear that these entities pose a host of potential public-choice problems.[64]
Indeed, as FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has noted:
I continue to hear concerns from broadband builders about unnecessary delays and costs when they seek to attach to poles that are owned by municipal and cooperative utilities. Unlike what we are doing in today’s item, there is a strong argument that Section 224 does not give us authority to address issues specific to those types of poles. Therefore, I encourage states and Congress to take a closer look at these issues—and revisit the exemption that exists in Section 224—so that we can ensure deployment is streamlined, regardless of the type of pole you are attaching to.[65]
We echo both Sen. Lee’s and Commissioner Carr’s sentiments here. The FCC’s important work on this matter stands to benefit millions of Americans trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide. The co-op and municipal loophole poses a major obstacle to achieving these ends. Insofar as Congress prioritizes quick and efficient broadband buildout, the TVA and its LPCs should not be able to thwart these goals through anticompetitive rates and refusals to deal. Congress should revisit this issue and grant the FCC jurisdiction over these types of pole owners.
Sen. Lee’s letter to the DOJ highlights issues that are extremely important to closing the digital divide. Broadband deployment could be harmed as a result of the practices by the TVA and the LPCs. If DOJ Antitrust Division chief Jonathan Kanter is serious about taking on gatekeeper power,[66] he should start here: with public entities granted a truly unassailable gatekeeper position over private markets. But even more importantly, Sen. Lee’s letter highlights the need to reform antitrust immunities that apply to SOEs. Economics suggests government monopolies are a greater harm to competition than private ones. Antitrust law should reflect that reality.
[1] 47 U.S.C. § 1702(b) (2018).
[2] See, infra, Appendix A [hereinafter “Lee Letter”].
[3] Broadband Assessment Report, Tennessee Valley Authority (Dec. 2022), https://www.tva.com/energy/technology-innovation/connected-communities/broadband-assessment-report.
[4] See Lee Letter, supra note 2, at 1-2.
[5] See 47 U.S.C. § 224(a)(1) (2018) (“The term ‘utility’ means any person who is a local exchange carrier or an electric, gas, water, steam, or other public utility, and who owns or controls poles, ducts, conduits, or rights-of-way used, in whole or in part, for any wire communications. Such term does not include any railroad, any person who is cooperatively organized, or any person owned by the Federal Government or any State.”).
[6] See Lee Letter, supra note 2, at n.2.
[7] Pole Attachment Fee Formulas Adopted by TVA and the FCC, Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (Jan. 2017), available at https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/tacir/commission-meetings/january-2017/2017January_BroadbandAppL.pdf.
[8] See Lee Letter, supra note 2, at n.4.
[9] See Armen A. Alchian, Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory, 58 J. Pol. Econ. 211 (1950).
[10] See, e.g., Jonathan Sallet, Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s, at 50-51 (Oct. 2019), available at https://www.benton.org/sites/default/files/BBA_full_F5_10.30.pdf.
[11] David E.M. Sappington & J. Gregory Sidak, Competition Law for State-Owned Enterprises, 71 Antitrust L.J. 479, 499 (2003).
[12] See Ben Sperry, Islands of Chaos: The Economic Calculation Problem Inherent in Municipal Broadband, Truth on the Market (Sept. 3, 2020), https://truthonthemarket.com/2020/09/03/islands-of-chaos-the-economic-calculation-problem-inherent-in-municipal-broadband.
[13] 540 U.S. 398 (2004).
[14] Id. at 408-09.
[15] This section is adapted from Ben Sperry, Broadband Deployment, Pole Attachments, & the Competition Economics of Rural-Electric Co-ops, Truth on the Market (Aug. 16, 2023), https://truthonthemarket.com/2023/08/16/broadband-deployment-pole-attachments-the-competition-economics-of-rural-electric-co-ops.
[16] See Brian O’Hara, Rural Electrical Cooperatives: Pole Attachment Policies and Issues, at 2, NRECA (Jun. 2019), available at https://www.cooperative.com/programs-services/government-relations/regulatory-issues/documents/2019.06.05%20nreca%20pole%20attachment%20white%20paper_final.pdf.
[17] Henry Hansmann, The Ownership of Enterprise (2000).
[18] Id. at 21.
[19] See id. at 169.
[20] Id.
[21] Id. at 170.
[22] Id.
[23] Id.
[24] See id. at 173
[25] See id.
[26] Id.
[27] See Debra C. Jeter, Randall S. Thomas, & Harwell Wells, Democracy and Dysfunction: Rural Electrical Cooperatives and the Surprising Persistence of the Separation of Ownership and Control, 70 Ala. L. Rev. 316, 372-395 (2018).
[28] Geoffrey A. Manne, Kristian Stout, & Ben Sperry, A Dynamic Analysis of Broadband Competition: What Concentration Numbers Fail to Capture, at 28, 32 (ICLE White Paper – June 2021), available at https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/A-Dynamic-Analysis-of-Broadband-Competition.pdf.
[29] Jeter et al., supra note 27, at 419-39.
[30] See Henry G. Manne, Mergers and the Market for Corporate Control, 73 J. Pol. Econ. 110 (1965).
[31] See John Farrell, Matt Grimley, & Nick Stumo-Langer, Report: Re-Member-ing the Electric Cooperative, Inst. For Local Self-Reliance (Mar. 29, 2016), https://ilsr.org/report-remembering-the-electric-cooperative/#Missing%20Members (“More than 70 percent of cooperatives have voter turnouts of less than 10 percent [] including Wilson’s Jackson Energy Cooperatives, which averages just under 3 percent turnout.”).
[32] Id.
[33] Jeter et al., supra note 27, at 397-400.
[34] See Lee Letter, supra note 2, at 1-2.
[35] See Trinko, 540 U.S. at 408-09.
[36] See Pole Attachment Fee Formulas Adopted by TVA and the FCC, supra note 7.
[37] See NCTA, Pole Attachments, https://www.ncta.com/positions/rural-broadband/pole-attachments (last accessed Sept. 4, 2023).
[38] Lee Letter, supra note 2, at 2.
[39] See Ben Sperry, When Violations of the Law Have No Remedy: The Case of Warrantless Wiretapping, Competitive Enterprise Institute (Aug. 8, 2012), https://cei.org/blog/when-violations-of-the-law-have-no-remedy-the-case-of-warrantless-wiretapping.
[40] See, e.g., Webster Cty. Coal v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 476 F.Supp. 529 (W.D. Ky. 1979) (finding the TVA is exempt from antitrust law); Sea-Land Serv. Inc. v. Alaska R.R., 659 F.2d 243 (D.C. Cir. 1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 919 (1982) (finding the Alaska Railroad exempt from antitrust law).
[41] 16 U.S.C. §831c(b) (2018).
[42] 139 S. Ct. 1435 (2019).
[43] Id. at 1439.
[44] Id. at 1443-44.
[45] Id. at 1444.
[46] City of Loudon v. TVA, 585 F.Supp. 83, 87 (E.D. Tenn. Jan. 30, 1984).
[47] The TVA could also argue that the rate formula for pole attachments that it sets is subject to the filed rate doctrine and thus exempted from antitrust scrutiny. The filed rate doctrine does not allow courts to second-guess agency determinations of rates. See Keogh v. Chicago & Northwest Railway Co., 260 U.S. 156 (1922). While the original case on the filed rate doctrine dealt with the literal situation of regulated entities filing rates which were approved by a regulator, courts have extended the doctrine to other situations where a regulator uses its authority to set rates. Cf. Wortman v. All Nippon Airways, 854 F.3d 606, 611 (9th Cir. 2017) (“While the filed rate doctrine initially grew out of circumstances in which common carriers filed rates that a federal agency then directly approved, we have applied the doctrine in contexts beyond this paradigmatic scheme.”) The unique situation with the TVA is that there is no clear statutory ratemaking authority over pole attachments, but they have asserted the ability to do so under their contract powers, raising the same issue of whether this is a governmental function or market function. See TVA Determination of Regulation on Pole Attachments 2 (Jan. 22, 2016), available at https://tva-azr-eastus-cdn-ep-tvawcm-prd.azureedge.net/cdn-tvawcma/docs/default-source/about-tva/guidelines-reports/determination-on-regulation-of-pole-attachments-7-12-2023.pdf. Even if the filed rate doctrine applies, though, it would not stop an enforcement action aimed at an injunction or declaratory relief by the DOJ, just treble damages sought by a private litigant. See Keogh, 260 U.S. at 162 (“[T]he fact that these rates had been approved by the Commission would not, it seems, bar proceedings by the Government.”).
[48] See, e.g., Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341 (1943) and its progeny.
[49] North Carolina State Bd. of Dental Examiners v. FTC, 574 U.S. 494, 506 (2015) (internal citations omitted).
[50] Town of Hallie v. City of Eau Claire, 471 U.S. 34, 47 (1985).
[51] See, e.g., City of Columbia v. Omni Outdoor Advertising Inc., 499 U.S. 365, 379 (1991) (“We reiterate that, with the possible market participant exception, any action that qualifies as state action is ‘ipso facto… exempt from the operation of the antitrust laws…’”); FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health Systems Inc., 568 U.S. 216, 226 n.4 (“An amicus curiae contends that we should recognize and apply a ‘market participant’ exception to state-action immunity because Georgia’s hospital authorities engage in proprietary activities… Because this argument was not raised by the parties or passed on by the lower courts, we do not consider it.”).
[52] City of Lafayette v. Louisiana Power & Light Co., 435 U.S. 389, 403 (1978).
[53] See, e.g., Edinboro Coll. Park Apartments v. Edinboro Univ. Found., 850 F.3d 567 (3d Cir. 2017); VIBO Corp. v. Conway, 669 F.3d 675 (6th Cir. 2012); Freedom Holdings Inc. v. Cuomo, 624 F.3d 38 (2d Cir. 2010); Hedgecock v. Blackwell Land Co., 52 F.3d 333 (9th Cir. 1995).
[54] See Jarod M. Bona & Luke A. Wake, The Market-Participant Exception to State-Action Immunity from Antitrust Liability, 23 J. Antitrust & Unfair Comp. L. Section of the State Bar of Ca., Vol. 1 (Spring 2014), available at https://www.theantitrustattorney.com/files/2014/05/Market-Participant-Exception-Article.pdf.
[55] See Lee Letter, supra note 2, at 2.
[56] Id. at n.4; N.C. Gen. Stat. § 62-350(a) (requiring all pole owners to offer non-discriminatory pole access); 807 Ky. Admin. Regs. 5:015 § 2(1) (same).
[57] 16 U.S.C. § 831i (2018) (“Board is authorized to include in any contract for the sale of power such terms and conditions, including resale rate schedules, and to provide for such rules and regulations as in its judgment may be necessary or desirable for carrying out the purposes of this Act”).
[58] 16 U.S.C. § 831 (2018).
[59] See Delta Turner Ltd. v. Grand Rapids-Kent County Convention/Arena Authority, 600 F.Supp.2d 920 (W.D. Mich. 2009).
[60] Id. at 929.
[61] Lee Letter, supra note 2, at n.5.
[62] Id.
[63] Id. at n.3.
[64] See Vincent Ostrom & Elinor Ostrom, Public Goods and Public Choices, in Alternatives for Delivering Public Services: Toward Improved Performance (1979) (“[I]nstitutions designed to overcome problems of market failure often manifest serious deficiencies of their own. Market failures are not necessarily corrected by recourse to public sector solutions.”).
[65] Accelerating Wireline Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure Investment, WC Docket No. 17-84, Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (March 16, 2022) (Statement of Commissioner Brendan Carr), available at https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-22-20A3.pdf.
[66] See, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter Delivers Opening Remarks at the Second Annual Spring Enforcers Summit, U.S. Justice Department (Mar. 27, 2023), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/assistant-attorney-general-jonathan-kanter-delivers-opening-remarks-second-annual-spring (“Gatekeeper power has become the most pressing competitive problem of our generation at a time when many of the previous generations’ tools to assess and address gatekeeper power have become outmoded.”).
TOTM Financial technology, or so-called “fintech,” is disrupting the financial sector, and that’s a good thing. Fintech services are making finance more digital and more user-friendly. . . .
Financial technology, or so-called “fintech,” is disrupting the financial sector, and that’s a good thing. Fintech services are making finance more digital and more user-friendly. This, in turn, has led to reduced transactions costs and increased levels of competition, innovation, and financial inclusion.
Alas, the emergence of fintech has also been accompanied by a rising chorus of the usual “if it’s good, mandate it; if I don’t like it, forbid it” reasoning that has motivated so many prior waves of regulatory intervention. The resulting regulations may be well-intentioned, but they more often than not lead to unintended consequences.
Scholarship Abstract In 2015, the FCC established the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) for sharing the 3.5 GHz Band (3550-3700 MHz) among federal and non-federal users . . .
In 2015, the FCC established the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) for sharing the 3.5 GHz Band (3550-3700 MHz) among federal and non-federal users in the United States. This rulemaking created an experiment in a novel three-tier rights structure: strong protections for incumbents, including government radar systems; Priority Access Licenses (PALs) granting exclusive rights to high bidders in an FCC auction, in part of the band and subject to avoiding interference with incumbents; and Generalized Authorized Access (GAA) for unlicensed users, subject to avoiding interference with both PALs and incumbents. The first commercial deployments in this band were approved in 2019 for GAA devices, and an auction of PALs completed in 2020 generated $4.5 billion in revenues.
It is now timely to evaluate this experiment and glean lessons for applications to other spectrum bands, such as the neighboring 3.1-3.45 GHz band or portions of the upper mid-band spectrum 7-24 GHz. In fact, a number of perspectives on CBRS have been recently published. In this paper we review these developments and suggest related policy questions that should be considered when evaluating the use of CBRS-style allocation rules in future bands.
The CBRS policy involves several different innovations, seeking to accomplish multiple objectives. One can evaluate this approach from a technical point of view, as an experiment to show that dynamic sharing can provide multiple tiers of commercial access to a band of spectrum while protecting incumbent users. The approach involves coordinated access via a cloud-based Spectrum Access System (SAS) and an Environmental Sensing Capability (ESC) to monitor incumbent users of the band, with requirements standardized through the Wireless Innovation Forum (WInnForum) and implementations certified by the FCC. From an economic and policy point of view, this type of dynamic sharing is asserted to reduce the costs and delays involved in making additional spectrum available for commercial use, as it seeks to avoid relocating incumbents. Of course, costs and benefits should be observed, not simply assumed, and the process undertaken should be compared to those associated with the relevant policy alternatives.
CBRS adopted the PAL and GAA tiers for commercial access in an attempt to provide spectrum that could not only support deployments by traditional wireless providers, but also enable new uses of the spectrum by non-traditional entities. How well the spectrum can support these uses, and whether this type of approach leads to an economically efficient mix of uses, provides another economic and policy lens through which this system can be evaluated. This paper explores the technical implementation of the CBRS spectrum sharing approach, and then attempts to appraise the economic welfare results of the novel allocation policy.
Scholarship Abstract Recent controversies in the District of Delaware raise questions regarding the degree to which litigants may or should be compelled to disclose ownership, funding, . . .
Recent controversies in the District of Delaware raise questions regarding the degree to which litigants may or should be compelled to disclose ownership, funding, and management structures. The controversies have led to an extraordinary series of hearings resulting ultimately in a challenge to the authority of a district judge to investigate compliance with disclosure rules and related litigation conduct. This article surveys six different rationales for compelling disclosure. It discusses their strengths and weaknesses and the scope of disclosure they support. It concludes that increased disclosure is desirable and that most of the disclosure ordered in the current controversies in Delaware is justified under current law. The article also proposes amendments to the FRCP, Title 28, and the Patent act to facilitate future case management.
Scholarship Abstract Accelerating demand for wireless broadband is accentuating the need to optimize use of limited spectrum resources that are susceptible to congestion. Recent technological innovations . . .
Accelerating demand for wireless broadband is accentuating the need to optimize use of limited spectrum resources that are susceptible to congestion. Recent technological innovations enable exclusive-use, licensed spectrum and open-access, unlicensed spectrum to serve as complementary goods. We present a game-theoretic model in which wireless broadband service providers engage in simultaneous pricing and service decisions for a heterogeneous consumer population. We demonstrate that for some unlicensed allocations, service providers may maximize profit by offloading some consumer traffic onto the unlicensed band. Consequently, adding unlicensed capacity can increase congestion in wireless spectrum bands in ways that harm social and consumer welfare. These effects are reminiscent of Braess’s Paradox, in which adding capacity counterintuitively leads to greater congestion. Notably, these effects emerge through supply-side differentiation strategies, rather than demand-side responses. We then utilize our framework to analyze recent high-profile decisions by the FCC and introduce a framework for identifying the appropriate balance between licensed and unlicensed allocations.
Scholarship Abstract China is making an active push to enlarge its role in the development of Internet-related technical standards. The prevailing narrative surrounding this trend suggests . . .
China is making an active push to enlarge its role in the development of Internet-related technical standards. The prevailing narrative surrounding this trend suggests that Beijing is aiming to uproot the liberal, democratic values embedded in the Internet’s technical foundation and governance arrangements in favor of authoritarian-friendly alternatives. For many, these fears were fully realized when Chinese tech giant Huawei came to the UN-affiliated International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and proposed the development of a future core Internet protocol called “New IP”. This proposal allegedly sought to redesign the architecture of the Internet in a way that would both enhance and export the Chinese government’s capacity for digital repression. Informed by the understanding of Chinese standards influence as a geopolitical and ideological threat, many are now calling for a more aggressive response to countering Chinese engagement in Internet standards bodies.
Yet, the conventional narrative seems to be missing something. Specifically, it overlooks the fact that the sophisticated Internet control apparatus China has developed over the years can already censor and surveil quite effectively at present and that shifting responsibility for core protocol development to the state-driven ITU would not necessarily enhance its ability to do so. A more comprehensive understanding of this trend is needed.
Using New IP as the primary case study, this article examines China’s standard-setting push, its potential motivations, and its implications for the future of the global Internet. We conclude that it is far from clear that New IP was indeed intended as a trojan horse for digital authoritarianism. Observing that technical evolution of the Internet—particularly the type endorsed in Huawei’s proposal—plays a prominent role in China’s long-term industrial policy strategy, we find it equally plausible that New IP was motivated by economic considerations, something that has largely been absent from the debate over China’s standards ambitions. We thus caution against the presumption that Chinese-developed standards are intended to advance the cause of digital repression as well as against politically driven opposition to growing Chinese participation at Internet standard-setting bodies. This insight is crucial, as the way American policymakers and Internet stakeholders respond to this trend will undoubtedly impact both the future of the global Internet and U.S. technological leadership in this domain.
Regulatory Comments I. Introduction On 27 April 2023, the European Commission published its Proposal for a Regulation on Standard Essential Patents (“SEP Regulation”). The proclaimed aims of . . .
On 27 April 2023, the European Commission published its Proposal for a Regulation on Standard Essential Patents (“SEP Regulation”). The proclaimed aims of the SEP Regulation are to: 1. ensure that end users, including small businesses and EU consumers, benefit from products based on the latest standardised technologies; 2. make the EU attractive for standards innovation; and 3. encourage both SEP holders and implementers to innovate in the EU, make and sell products in the EU, and be competitive in non-EU markets.[1]
We are grateful for the opportunity to provide comments on the proposed SEP Regulation in the context of public feedback. The following is a summary of our observations:
Considering the above, it is our view is that the proposed SEP Regulation, in its current form, is unnecessary, disproportionate, and likely to harm both European innovators and Europe’s technology leadership on a global stage.
Nevertheless, this is not to say that the SEP licensing framework cannot be further refined and simplified. It may be possible to find solutions that might improve the existing system in a cost-effective, balanced, and efficient way. We propose some private ordering instruments as an alternative to regulation, which could be used to make licensing in the Internet of Things (“IoT”) more efficient and transparent.
The current system of SEP licensing consists of bilateral negotiations and collective licensing via patent pools. The overwhelming majority of licensing agreements are concluded amicably,[2] but in cases where parties cannot agree, litigation may become necessary.[3] This is, of course, a feature of commercial disputes of all kinds.[4] Over the years, courts have proven more than capable of resolving various contentious questions about SEPs. For instance, they gave promulgated guidance regarding if and under what conditions the SEP owner can request and obtain an injunction for infringement of an SEP;[5] what the FRAND rate between the parties ought to be;[6] the scope of a FRAND license, whether global or national;[7] the meaning of a FRAND commitment’s non-discrimination requirements;[8] whether FRAND commitments require SEP owners to offer licenses at different levels of the production chain;[9] and how to adjudicate allegations of patent holdup (supposedly opportunistic behaviour of SEP owners attempting to charge more than FRAND terms) and holdout (implementers intentionally delaying or avoiding the conclusion of a licensing agreement).[10] The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) provided a framework in Huawei v ZTE for good-faith license negotiation. Courts of the EU Member States have subsequently become accustomed to evaluating the conduct of both parties and have produced substantial case law and guidance on the contents of good-faith licensing negotiations.[11]
Despite successful interventions by the courts, the Commission is concerned that the current SEP licensing and litigation system is fraught with problems and inefficiencies. Three alleged major problems have been suggested as justifying regulatory intervention.
First are high transaction costs and licensing uncertainties. According to the Commission, the average per-licence bilateral negotiation costs for the SEP holder and implementer are estimated to be between €2 million and €11 million.[12] The Commissions asserts that licensing uncertainties follow from insufficient transparency of SEP ownership and essentiality, lack of information about FRAND royalties, and a dispute system not adapted for FRAND determination.[13] That system is said to be dissatisfactory for both parties.
The Commission maintains that SEP owners face long negotiations and high costs of licensing.[14] To better assess the value that the technology brings to standard implementations, an SEP owner would have to wait several years (on average, between two and four) until the standard is implemented in the market and then approach companies with an offer to license.[15] Negotiations would then ensue, taking about three years. If no agreement is reached, litigation would add another one to two and a half years.[16] During all this time, the SEP owner would not receive any royalties for use of its technology. According to the Commission, this may explain why major SEP owners usually have licenses with only 100-200 implementers with sufficiently high volumes and/or sales value that would allow for the absorption of these costs.[17] Thus, SEP owners are unable to license the whole market. High licensing and negotiation costs may reduce their income base and incentive for participation in developing new standards.[18]
On the other hand, the Commission says that implementers face uncertainty about the costs of using standards, potentially discouraging them from implementing new technologies.[19] Implementers who take a licence are also worried about being disadvantaged against their unlicensed foreign competitors.[20] Of course, licensees are worried about competitors who do not take licences—it makes no difference whether they are foreign or home-grown. But the Commission seems to have not taken into account that this holdout is not only real, but is the most egregious example of anticompetitive behaviour.
The second supposed problem is the growing IoT market that increasingly uses technological standards from the information and communications technology (“ICT”) industry.[21] IoT markets are fragmented; volumes for certain applications may be small and profit margins tight. These industries are also not familiar with SEPs. The combination of these factors is said to make SEP licensing more difficult and expensive.
The third major concern is the protection of small and midsize enterprises (“SMEs”). According to the Commission, SMEs lack the resources to negotiate with SEP owners on an equal footing or to engage in court proceedings.[22] They also do not have sufficient licensing expertise. 84% of EU-based standard implementers are SMEs, totalling about 3,192 companies.[23]
The publicly available evidence relayed by the Commission, however, does not justify any significant concern with the current SEP-licensing system, much less a concern of such magnitude to justify extensive regulatory intervention. In fact, the Commission’s study found that high transaction costs and licensing uncertainties have not led to increased litigation or systemic negative effects.[24]
First, the Commission found that the volume of SEP-litigation cases has been relatively stable in Europe, while falling in the United States but increasing in China.[25] In recent years, the share of declared SEPs subject to litigation has declined.[26] They further showed that the prevalence of SEP litigation is low and has not increased over time. According to the study, there are fewer than 0.05 lawsuits per-license involving major SEP licensors and patent pools.[27] Regarding the effects of the current SEP-licensing system on the incentives of SEP owners and implementers, the study found no evidence that SEP owners contribute less to standards development.[28] The econometric evidence suggests that a significant share of contributions to standards development relies on patent-related incentives, indicating the importance of preserving innovation incentives for the success of the standards-development process. On the implementation side, the study found no evidence that SEP-licensing frictions lead implementers to switch to alternative (royalty-free) standards or to have systematically depressed or delayed standards implementation.[29]
The evidence from the mobile-telecommunications market, which some believe is hindered by SEP-licensing inefficiencies, demonstrates that it is functioning particularly well, with year-to-year increased output, lower prices, increased market entry, and billions of euros of investment in research and development (R&D) for connectivity standards and the rollout of new network infrastructure.[30] For example, the latest estimate for the mobile economy in 2022 was 8.4 billion SIM connections and 4.4 billion mobile-internet subscribers, contributing $5.2 trillion or 5% of global gross domestic product, and directly and indirectly supporting 28 million jobs.[31] In Europe, subscriber penetration was 90%, and smartphone adoption was 81%.[32] By 2035, the impact of 5G is projected to grow to $13.2 trillion in global economic output, and the global 5G value chain will generate $3.6 trillion in economic output.[33] Moreover, 5G is expected to add up to €1 trillion to European GDP by 2025.[34] In comparison, the total estimated revenue from cellular SEP licensing was estimated to be less than 0.5% of the mobile economy.[35] Other studies found that the cumulative royalty yield of 2G, 3G, and 4G SEPs was only 3.4% of the smartphone’s average selling price, or just $9.60.[36]
As to potential licensing problems in the IoT, we have yet to see the full implementation of ICT standards and corresponding SEP licensing. As such, it is too early to conclude with a sufficient degree of certainty whether there will be a systemic problem with IoT licensing. The Commission’s Impact Assessment did not provide information on the current SEP-licensing revenues obtained from various IoT sectors.[37] Thus, we do not know the current magnitude of SEP licensing in the IoT. What is certain is that IoT devices will grow in the future. According to the CRA study, cellular IoT devices represented only 20% of mobile phones in 2022, which is expected to grow to 60% by 2030.[38] As such, while licensing in the IoT may generate significant revenues, we do not at the moment have sufficient information on how many IoT devices are currently licensed.
We may observe, however, that market actors are adapting to the challenges posed by IoT. Avanci is a platform for licensing 3G, 4G, and soon 5G in the IoT.[39] It has a licensing programme for car manufacturers and has more than 120 million licensed connected vehicles.[40] Avanci includes 56 licensors and has brought together the largest SEP owners, such as Samsung, Qualcomm, Nokia, and Ericsson. It offers a one-stop solution for vehicle manufacturers with a single per unit-license of $20 per vehicle—less than a parking ticket. According to some estimates, Avanci successfully covers more than 80% of the market.[41] It may be said that SEP licensing in the automotive sector has been successfully concluded, despite the initial reluctance of car manufacturers and disputes about the appropriate level of licensing.[42]
In another example, Sisvel, a patent-pool administrator, experimented with a novel payment mechanism to address concerns that companies that take a license are disadvantaged against their unlicensed competitors. For its Wi-Fi 6 pool, it provided a licensing programme that adjusts royalty payments based on the percentage of the licensed market.[43] In other words, most royalty payments will be deferred, unless and until other competitors also pay. Such a mechanism protects licensees from patent-infringement liability, while paying only a fraction of the due royalties until the whole market takes a licence. The experience of the Avanci and Sisvel pools demonstrates that SEP owners are adjusting to the changed market realities and looking for ways to simplify licensing, with innovative structures to address the need for certainty and transparency in the IoT.
As to the supposed harmful impact of the current system of SEP licensing on SMEs, it is difficult to draw such a conclusion from the available evidence. The Commission noted that most SMEs are de facto unlicensed because licensing costs outweigh potential licensing revenues.[44] To better understand the views of SMEs, the Commission carried out two surveys—a general one in which all stakeholders could participate and a targeted one only for SMEs. The Commission received responses from nine SMEs in the general survey, while 37 SMEs participated in the targeted survey.[45] That represents a sample of only 1.15% of the 3,192 SMEs that are reported to implement standards, making it impossible to draw general conclusions from such a limited sample. The question may be asked: if SMEs face licensing problems, why have they not expressed more interest in surveys? The only answer one can reasonably draw is that there is no problem. The SME survey shows some licensing; seven out of 37 SMEs had a license.[46] It would be interesting to know, however, which SEP owners approached and licensed SMEs, as well as the licensing policies of major SEP owners toward SMEs. We do not currently possess such information.
While there is no evidence that the current SEP licensing framework has produced systematic negative effects, this is not to say that the system could not be improved. Evidence still shows that licensing costs are not insignificant and that it takes years to conclude licensing agreements. Moreover, it is unlikely that every SEP owner could reach every implementer in the IoT, thus creating an uneven playing field between licensed and unlicensed implementers.
It is likely possible to improve the existing system in a cost-effective, balanced, and efficient way, including through private and public ordering instruments.[47] If the aims could be achieved with less costly instruments, extensive regulatory intervention might be neither necessary nor proportionate.[48] In other words, the existence of market imperfections is necessary but not sufficient conditions for regulatory intervention. Regulators should also be mindful not to fall into the “nirvana fallacy”, striving for ideal but unrealistic solutions that produce more costs than other feasible alternatives that may not lead to ideal results.[49]
While the Regulation pursues the worthwhile goals of increasing transparency and certainty to parties in SEP licensing, it is improbable that the proposed solutions will achieve those aims. This section raises several issues that should be considered in future policy discussions.
The Regulation imposes unbalanced costs and benefits. According to the Impact Assessment, SEP owners will bear all the costs, while implementers will reap all the benefits.[50] The 10-year average approximate annual benefits for SEP implementers are estimated to be €24.4 million, while for SEP owners, the costs are €28.9 million. As such, the Regulation does not attempt to improve conditions for all actors (i.e., pursue Pareto efficiency) but directly seeks to redistribute value from SEP owners to implementers. The Commission notes that a large part of SEP owners’ costs would be due to an expected increase in patent fees, thanks to the anticipated rise in the number of patents.[51] It adds that patent fees would represent revenue to European and national patent offices, making the whole system socially profitable.
The Commission recognised that it is difficult to predict the impact of SEP Regulation on royalty level. The Regulation’s effects may go in two opposing directions: 1. potentially more firms taking a license (increasing implementation costs and income for SEP owners), or 2. potentially lower royalties paid (decreasing implementers’ costs and SEP owners’ income).[52] The latter scenario would place even more costs on SEP owners. If royalty revenues fall and licensing costs of increase, an unintended but obvious consequence could be that SEP owners may no longer find collaborative standardisation attractive and might instead pursue proprietary solutions unencumbered by FRAND commitments. A fragmented global system would surely impede innovation.
The EU-based implementers will not even be among the primary beneficiaries of the Regulation’s value-redistribution. According to the Commission’s Impact Assessment, just 8% of potential manufacturing firms are in the EU. In other words, 92% of implementers are non-EU companies. The Regulation would effectively subsidise non-EU implementers while, at the same time, harming European technology developers and Europe’s technological leadership.
It is difficult to see justifications for such value redistribution from the evidence presented on the functioning of SEP licensing. In our view, any regulation should attempt to lead to better outcomes than the perceived harms it seeks to address.
The Regulation has a very broad scope and applies to an unknown number of standards. Once it enters into force, the Regulation would catch all FRAND-committed SEPs.[53] It is not unclear why such broad scope is necessary. Concerns about SEP-licensing problems have focused overwhelmingly on just a few standards, mainly in cellular communication (3G, 4G, 5G) and Wi-Fi. Other standards licensed on FRAND terms have not been mentioned as potentially problematic. Nevertheless, the Regulation will apply to all standards licensed on FRAND terms.
The Commission noted that there were about 75,000 patent families of declared SEPs worldwide in 2021.[54] But we still lack information on how many standard developing organisations (“SDOs”) were analysed, nor the number of standards expected to be caught. An earlier 2010 study identified 251 technical-interoperability standards in a modern laptop, with 148 of those licensed under FRAND terms.[55] It is unclear why these 148 standards should be regulated, nor what market failures have been associated with them. If anything, a better understanding of the SEP-licensing system in the laptop market is required before introducing regulations.
The Regulation offers some exceptions from its full application for a few standards deemed unproblematic. By a special act, the Commission will designate standards and use cases “where there is sufficient evidence that … SEP licensing negotiations on FRAND terms do not give rise to significant difficulties or inefficiencies affecting the functioning of the internal market”.[56] In other words, there is a presumption that all standards with FRAND-licensing conditions are inefficient and affect the internal market’s functioning, with the onus placed on stakeholders to rebut this presumption.
Even for such unproblematic standards, the exceptions are limited; only the provisions on conciliators facilitating the agreement on aggregate royalty rates, the nonbinding expert opinion on global aggregate royalty rates, and the mandatory FRAND determination will not apply.[57] The costliest obligations—i.e., the registration of SEP and annual essentiality checks—will continue to apply even for these standards.
The extent of the Regulation’s reliability will depend on having qualified experts to work as evaluators and conciliators. Evaluators will need specialised knowledge of the particular technological area in which they will conduct essentiality checks. The Commission estimates that there are about 1,500 experts (650 patent attorneys and 800 patent examiners) qualified to do essentiality checks in the EU.[58]
The sheer magnitude of the task, however, will require many more evaluators and it is very doubtful that the optimal number of potential qualified experts are even available to join this process. For certain, special arrangements would need to be made with patent offices to grant patent examiners leave to conduct essentiality checks. Each year, evaluators will need to test a random sample of up to 100 SEPs if requested by each SEP owner or an implementer per standard. Thus, the amount of work may exponentially increase depending on how many standards are caught by the Regulation.
If 148 FRAND-licensed standards per laptop are to serve as a rough proxy, then we might expect more than 100-200 standards to be checked for essentiality every year. In addition, if SEP owners and implementers regularly use the possibility of testing up to 100 SEPs per standard and per SEP owner, the sheer magnitude of work may exceed the capacity of patent attorneys. Patent attorneys may find it challenging to regularly engage in such high volumes of essentiality checks while also serving other clients. And why should they do it at all unless the rate of pay is at least what they could earn in a patent law firm? To be blunt, the work would not be as much fun as acting for real clients, so the pay would probably have to be even higher to attract applicants.
Consequently, it is very unlikely that the capability even exists to annually perform a large number of essentiality checks of registered SEPs. If the requirements to become an evaluator were relaxed to address this workload, this would cast doubt on the reliability of the whole system. There is no point in building a battleship unless you are sure you can get a competent crew.
Additionally, the patent attorneys who most apt to be familiar with these technologies may well also find themselves with conflicts of interest. They will probably have worked for some SEP owners or implementers. Elaborate rules to avoid such conflicts would need to be implemented to prevent patent attorneys who were, or still are, engaged with certain clients from becoming evaluators of those clients’ registered SEPs. The conflicts problem would, of course, apply not just to individual attorneys but to their entire firms.
Conciliators would also need to be experts in the field. They might come from the ranks of retired judges, seasoned former company officials, or experienced lawyers. Conflict-of-interest provisions should also ensure their independence and impartiality in mandatory FRAND determinations. But the job would, again, have to be sufficiently attractive, both in remuneration and in work content and culture. The Commission has made no investigation as to whether a sufficiently large pool of credible individuals could be found to make the system work.
Of course, there are well-established voluntary systems of conciliators and mediators, some of which are used now to help resolve FRAND disputes. But the proposal adds the idea of compulsory mediation or conciliation. There is scant evidence that either system works in other commercial disputes around the world, and it is unclear why it should be assumed to work here.
The Regulation also raises potential competition concerns. The participation of implementers in the process of providing expert opinion on global aggregate rates could be used as a vehicle for a buyers cartel and could devalue FRAND royalty rates. Namely, it is unclear from the text of the Regulation if implementers will be allowed to coordinate their submissions to conciliators. If this is permitted, implementers could use the process to exchange commercially sensitive information and agree on the maximum global aggregate royalties they would pay. This would be tantamount to a buyers cartel, with price fixing of input costs. Even if such coordination is not allowed, by individually submitting their maximum royalty expectations—which are made with the goal of minimising input costs—implementers might attempt to devalue SEP royalties. Given that there are far more implementers than there are SEP owners, implementers might have an outsized influence on conciliators preparing expert opinions. The Regulation also lacks competition safeguards against the exchange of commercially sensitive information by SEP owners in the process of joint notification of aggregate royalty rates, which establish the value that devices derive from using the standardised technologies in question.
Moreover, from a practical perspective, the provisions’ usefulness is questionable. The Regulation appears to allow multiple groups of SEP owners to jointly notify their views. This may add even more confusion to standard implementers. For example, some SEP owners could announce an aggregate rate of $10 per product, another 5% of the end-product price, while a third group would prefer a lower $1 per-product rate. Moreover, it is unclear what difference the joint aggregate royalty-rate notifications would bring to the existing practice of unilateral announcement of licensing terms. Many SEP owners already publicly announce their royalty programmes in advance, which was recognised by the Commission’s studies.[59] To be on the safe side, SEP owners may simply notify their maximum preference, knowing that negotiations would lead to different prices depending on the unique details of various licensees. As a result, the aggregate royalty rates may not produce meaningful data points.
Nonbinding expert opinions on global aggregate royalty rates could also add to the confusion. Implementers would likely initiate the process, which would then exist in parallel with SEP owners’ joint notifications of aggregate rates. All these different and possibly conflicting estimates might lead to even greater uncertainty. Moreover, if those providing nonbinding opinions are not universally regarded as “experts”, the parties are unlikely to respect such opinions.
Aggregate royalty notifications and nonbinding opinions might be used in the top-down method for FRAND-royalty determinations. A top-down method provides that the SEP owner should receive a proportional share of a standard’s total aggregate royalty. It requires: 1. establishing a cumulative royalty for a standard; and then 2. calculating the share in the total royalty for an individual SEP owner. This may be the reason for having aggregate royalty-rate notifications and opinions. At the same time, essentiality checks are still needed to filter out which patents are truly essential, and to assess each individual SEP owner’s share.
We caution strongly against relying too much on the top-down approach for FRAND-royalty determinations. It is not used in commercial-licensing negotiations, and courts have frequently rejected its application. Industry practice is to use comparable licensing agreements. The top-down approach was applied in Unwired Planet v Huawei only as a cross-check for the rates derived from comparable agreements.[60] TCL v Ericsson relied on this method, but was vacated on appeal.[61] The most recent Interdigital v Lenovo judgment considered and rejected its use, finding “no value in Interdigital’s Top-Down cross-check in any of its guises”.[62] Moreover, the top-down approach, as currently applied, relies only on patent counting. It does not consider that not every patent has the same value, nor that some patents may be invalid or not infringed by a specific device. Crucially, the top-down approach and aggregate royalty notifications/opinions would be related to global FRAND royalties, while the registration of SEPs and corresponding essentiality checks are limited only to EU SEPs. In other words, the SEP Regulation has extraterritorial effects, the consequences of which are discussed below.
As a result of the high costs imposed by the Regulation and the likely delays caused by mediation/conciliation, SEP owners may realistically decide to enforce their patents outside the EU, in such countries as the United Kingdom, the United States, China, and India—all of which have had SEP litigation. This would allow firms to avoid application of the Regulation entirely.[63] Judge Klaus Grabinski, president of the Court of Appeal of the Unified Patent Court, went out of his way to note just that at the Court’s opening ceremony in Luxembourg.[64] In truth, the Regulation constitutes a statement of lack of faith that the new Court (or, indeed, any court) can do their job.
The evidence already shows that SEP litigation in China is rising, while the United States—historically, a major venue for SEP litigation—may see a renewed increase in cases should Europe become an unattractive option.[65] The UK is also a major forum that has witnessed important cases clarifying many aspects of FRAND licensing.
For its part, Europe has built an impressive case law in implementing the Huawei v ZTE judgment and clarified the steps in good-faith licensing negotiations, but it could be left behind in shaping global SEP-licensing practices if the Regulation serves to shift litigation to other jurisdictions.
As currently drafted, the SEP Regulation has exterritorial effects, which may lead to unintended consequences. It applies to SEPs in force in one of the EU Member States. Such SEPs should be registered with the SEP Register and will be subject to essentiality checks. This is in accordance with the principle of territoriality.
The Regulation then provides, however, for a nonbinding expert opinion that will relate to a global royalty rate, and that FRAND determination shall concern a global FRAND license (unless otherwise specified by the parties). In other words, while SEP Register and essentiality checks apply only for patents in force in EU Member States, aggregate royalties and FRAND determination will be worldwide, covering portfolios in other countries.
This exterritoriality may lead to three effects. First, if the SEP Register and the result of essentiality checks for EU SEPs are used in global aggregate royalty and FRAND determinations, they will produce inaccurate results. Some patent owners focus on the United States and U.S.-based SDOs and do not patent as much in Europe. There may also be many SEPs in China and other Asian countries that do not have European counterparts.[66] It is a euro-centric view to assume that European SEPs are a sufficient basis to determine global aggregate and FRAND rates. The Commission’s Impact Assessment notes that the EU’s share of SEPs is only 15%, compared to the United States and South Korea’s shares of 19% and China’s 30%.[67]
Second, while it is true that standards are global and commercial practice is to license globally, it is a different matter altogether when legislation requires its institutions to adopt measures with extraterritorial effects. Conciliators determining global aggregate and FRAND rates would indirectly rule on foreign portfolios held by foreign companies. Other countries will not look on this favourably.
The third and principal unintended consequence is that other countries may introduce similar regulations and could easily justify their actions as incorporating a simple “best practice” from Europe. Imagine a situation in which similar regulations are adopted by other countries: requiring notification of national SEPs, conducting local essentiality checks, determining global aggregate royalty rates for a standard, and setting global FRAND-licensing terms. It would effectively transfer SEP disputes from courts into the hands of national regulators.
Moreover, the costs to SEP owners for enforcing SEPs would be compounded, since they would need to notify and pay for essentiality checks in multiple countries. The effects of these increased costs of SEP enforcement and licensing on innovation incentives and participation in collaborative standardisation would need to be assessed. A radically changed and fragmented SEP-licensing environment would also lead to even more uncertainty for both SEP owners and implementers.
An SEP regulation implemented by other countries might easily backfire and could be used as a strategic tool to devalue the royalties of innovative European SEP owners. China might be especially receptive to the idea of regulating SEP licensing. Jonathan Barnett has provided evidence regarding how China has strategically deployed competition and patent law to reduce royalties for SEPs held by foreign companies to the benefit of domestic manufacturers.[68] The EU has also launched a complaint before the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) against China’s practice of issuing broad anti-suit injunctions to prevent the enforcement of SEPs in other jurisdictions.[69] Instead of using competition and patent law, a regulation similar to the one proposed by the European Commission could attain the same industrial policy and protectionist aims.
Taken together, the proposed SEP Regulation makes licensing SEPs more costly, provides solutions that are likely to prove unworkable in practice, and risks countervailing measures by other countries that might be detrimental to European SEP owners and innovation.
Here, we suggest some measures as alternatives to the proposed Regulation. Consistent with the principle that extensive regulatory intervention might not be necessary or proportionate if the aims could be achieved with less-costly instruments, we believe small changes in the institutes of private ordering might improve the existing system in a cost-effective and balanced way. If regulatory action is to be pursued, however, then the application of the Regulation could be limited at first to only a few selected standards and/or use cases to tests its effects.
According to the Commission, most standard implementers are SMEs.[70] They are currently de facto unlicensed since the transaction costs apparently outweigh the expected licensing revenues. They will remain unlicensed until they achieve sufficient market scale for the licensing to become profitable. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that a small number of SMEs have a licence, but we do not have information on how many, or which SEP owners licensed those SMEs.[71]
The situation for SMEs is thus characterised by uncertainty. While most SMEs will not be approached for a license, a small number might still be targeted by some SEP owners. Those SMEs that took a licence would be disadvantaged compared to the unlicensed majority of SMEs. Additionally, SMEs are uncertain at what point they would be considered sufficiently large to trigger the interest of SEP owners.
A private-ordering solution could be for SEP owners to give a binding pledge not to enforce SEPs against SMEs. The Commission might investigate how much support such a measure has with SEP owners. Such a pledge could be given to relevant SDOs and made public. To avoid any doubt, a definition of an SME should also be provided. For example, the Commission considers an entity an SME if it has less than 250 employees and a turnover of no more than €50 million or a balance sheet of no more than €43 million.[72] Other definitions could also be considered. For instance, there may be successful companies in the IoT that employ less staff but generate large turnover and capture a significant share of the relevant market. In any event, a clear threshold should be set so that companies may know in advance at what point they would need to take a license and might expect to be approached by SEP owners.
The downside of binding pledges not to enforce SEPs against SMEs is that SMEs represent an important part of the market. As mentioned, 84% of standard-implementers in the EU are estimated to be SMEs. While it might not be profitable to license them individually, they may generate significant collective royalties. Thus, SEP owners would be renouncing a potentially substantial royalty income. A better option might be to consider ways to simplify and reduce the costs of licensing to SMEs, as discussed in the next proposal.
One way for SMEs to get licensed simply and efficiently would be to form special license-purchasing groups (“LPGs”), as proposed by Ruud Peters et al.[73] LPGs would comprise SMEs with up to 15-20% share of the relevant market, and an LPG administrator experienced in patent licensing would take care of licensing negotiations on behalf of member SMEs. This option would simplify licencing for SMEs and reduce transaction costs for both sides. SEP owners would negotiate with just one entity and, with one license, could cover hundreds or thousands of SMEs that are not profitable to license individually. The benefits to SMEs would be that they could delegate licensing negotiations to experienced professionals and be ensured that they will receive a license on the same terms as other SMEs in the LPG.
It is important to note that this proposal differs from the licensing-negotiations groups (“LNGs”) suggested by the SEP Expert Group, which raise serious competition-law risks and may be considered a façade for buyers’ cartels among implementers.[74] In an LPG, there will be no discussion of product prices, profit margins, market share, the maximum amount of royalty, or licensing level. The tasks of the LPG administrator are only to check if an SME needs a license (i.e., if it produces standard-implementing products) and to negotiate such a license with individual SEP owners and pools based on their licensing programmes. In licensing negotiations, the LPG administrator would ensure that LPG members receive an appropriate volume discount, so that SMEs would not be disadvantaged relative to larger companies with significant volumes; guarantee that members comply with reporting obligations and royalty payments to qualify for a discounted rate for compliance; and attempt to negotiate a discount on past sales. If an SME that is a member of LPG does not accept a license negotiated by the LPG administrator, it would be considered an unwilling licensee, and the SEP owner might be able to sue and obtain an injunction in accordance with Huawei v ZTE.
Therefore, with appropriate competition safeguards and mechanisms against holdout, LPGs might be a vehicle for SMEs to receive a license in an efficient, inexpensive, and secure manner, and for SEP owners to cover the whole market, which is currently untapped because of the unprofitability of bilateral licensing with SMEs.
Patent pools may be an effective solution for IoT use cases characterised by many implementers and where no-cross licensing is involved. We are already witnessing Avanci and Sisvel preparing and modelling new licensing programmes for different IoT applications. Patent pools would resolve many of the Commission’s concerns about transparency: they provide certainty that truly essential patents are included in a pool, and if many SEP owners accept the pool, it serves as a de facto aggregate royalty rate for a standard.
The Commission might explore ways to assist the creation of pools. The first step may be to initiate a dialogue with patent owners and pool administrators to understand what help they may need in setting new licensing programmes. Concrete measures could then be taken to incentivise and support pool formation. For example, a pool’s implementation costs are often substantial,[75] and the Commission might consider subsidising initial essentiality checks of patents included in a pool, which would be repaid after the pool starts generating licensing revenues.
If the Regulation is to be adopted in the present shape, which we think would be a mistake, its scope of application could be limited to only a few selected standards and/or use cases for which the Commission has evidence of licensing inefficiencies, and which would serve as a real-world test of the usefulness of new regulatory measures. In this way, we may observe in real time how regulatory measures would be applied in practice and their effects on SEP-licensing markets. After evaluating their effectiveness, the Regulation might later be expanded to include other standards where licensing inefficiencies have been identified, or it may be changed or completely repealed if the solutions proposed by the Regulation prove to be ineffective, burdensome, and costly, as we and many others predict they would be.
We would like to thank the European Commission for the opportunity to comment on the proposed SEP Regulation. We believe that the available evidence used by the Commission in preparation for this Regulation does not show the existence of market failure in SEP-licensing markets that justify regulatory oversight. Quite the opposite, the mobile-telecommunications sector, which is alleged to be the most problematic, is seeing continuous growth, innovation, and market entry. The incidence of SEP litigation is low and has been declining over the years, with no systemic negative effects on SEP owners and implementers.
In our opinion, the proposed SEP Regulation would complicate SEP licensing even further and may alter incentives to innovate in the open-standardisation environment. It unevenly distributes all the benefits to implementers and costs to SEP owners, raising the costs of licensing even more. Its broad scope will capture all standards licensed on FRAND terms, despite not establishing with a sufficient degree of certainty that all these standards are problematic. The increased costs of enforcing SEPs may shift the litigation away from Europe to other parts of the world: the United States, United Kingdom, China, and India.
European courts have over the years have built impressive case law clarifying the contents of FRAND licenses and good-faith licensing negotiations. It would be a shame to see Europe lose its place in influencing the future SEP-licensing framework. Crucially, other countries may be inspired by the Commission’s SEP Regulation and decide to adopt similar regulatory regimes. Regulations implemented by other countries might easily backfire and be used for protectionist purposes and as a strategic tool to devalue the royalties of innovative European SEP owners. The primary beneficiaries of the Regulation might be non-EU based implementers, to the detriment of European innovators and Europe’s technological leadership.
While we believe the proposed SEP Regulation is unnecessary and disproportionate, this is not to say that the SEP-licensing framework cannot be further refined and simplified. The challenge, however, is to find solutions that improve the existing system in a cost-effective, balanced, and efficient way. We believe market-based mechanisms should be supported and sought over government regulation. It must also be emphasised that there is no one size-fits-all answer. Different solutions may be applied in different markets, and appropriate competition-law safeguards must be put in place to guarantee efficient market outcomes.
[1] European Commission, Explanatory Memorandum for Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on Standard Essential Patents and Amending Regulation (EU) 2017/1001, COM (2023) 232 Final (“Explanatory Memorandum”).
[2] Justus Baron, Pere Argue-Castells, Armandine Leonard, Tim Pohlman, & Eric Sergheraert, Empirical Assessment of Potential Challenges in SEP Licensing, European Commission (2023), p. 112.
[3] See European Commission, Impact Assessment Report Accompanying the Document Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on Standard Essential Patents and Amending Regulation (EU) 2017/1001, SWD(2023) 124 final (“Impact Assessment”) p. 26 (“about 70% of the implementers take a license without litigation according to the results from the public consultation”).
[4] Adapting Carl von Clausewitz’s aphorism: “Litigation is the continuation of negotiation by other means.”
[5] C-170/13 Huawei v ZTE, ECLI:EU:C:2015:477
[6] Unwired Planet v Huawei [2017] EWHC 711 (Pat).
[7] Sisvel v Haier, KZR 36/17 Federal Court of Justice (05 May 2020)
[8] Unwired Planet v Huawei; Huawei and ZTE v Conversant [2020] UKSC 37; Philips v Wiko, 6 U 183/16 Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court (30 October 2019); HEVC (Dolby) v MAS Elektronik, 4c O 44/18 Dusseldorf Regional Court (7 May 2020).
[9] Nokia v Daimler, 2 0 34/19, Mannheim Regional Court (18 August 2020); Sharp v Daimler, 7 O 8818/19 Munich Regional Court (10 September 2020).
[10] See, Sisvel v Haier, KZR 36/17 Federal Court of Justice (05 May 2020), 61 (that implementers should not engage in patent holdout by exploiting the structural disadvantage, which SEP holders face due to the limitation of their rights to assert patents in court); Optis v Apple [2022] EWCA Civ 1411, 115 (“Apple’s behaviour …. Could well be argued to constitute a form of hold out … while Optis’ contention … would open the door to holdout”); Ericsson v D-Link, 773 F.3d 1201, 1234 (Fed Cir 2014) (“The district court need not instruct the jury on hold-up or stacking unless the accused infringer presents actual evidence of hold-up or stacking. Certainly something more than a general argument that these phenomena are possibilities is necessary.”)
[11] An electronic database of court cases implementing Huawei v ZTE is available at: https://caselaw.4ipcouncil.com/guidance-national-courts.
[12] Impact Assessment p. 13.
[13] Id. at 17.
[14] Id. at 14.
[15] Id. at12.
[16] Id. at 12.
[17] Id.
[18] Id. at 16.
[19] Id. at 14.
[20] Id. at 16.
[21] Id. at 23.
[22] Id. at 17.
[23] Id. at 11.
[24] Baron et al., supra note 2.
[25] Id. at 109-110
[26] Id. at110
[27] Id. at 108, 112.
[28] Id. at 164.
[29] Id. at 164.
[30] For some of the voluminous literature, see: Alexander Galetovic, Stephen Haber, & Ross Levine, An Empirical Examination of Patent Holdup, 11(3) Journal of Competition Law & Economics 549 (2015); Keith Mallinson, Don’t Fix What Isn’t Broken: The Extraordinary Record of Innovation and Success in the Cellular Industry Under Existing Licensing Practices, 23 George Mason Law Review 967 (2016); David Teece, The “Tragedy of the Anticommons” Fallacy: A Law and Economics Analysis of Patent Thickets and FRAND Licensing, 32 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1490 (2017); J. Gregory Sidak, Is Patent Holdup a Hoax, 3 Criterion Journal on Innovation 401 (2018); Alexander Galetovic, Stephen Haber, & Lew Zaretzki, Is There an Anti-Commons Tragedy in the Smartphone Industry, 32 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1527 (2018); Daniel F. Spulber, Licensing Standard Essential Patents with FRAND Commitments: Preparing for 5G Mobile Telecommunications, 18 Colorado Technology Law Journal 79 (2020); Dirk Auer & Julian Morris, Governing the Patent Commons, 38(2) Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 291 (2020).
[31] The Mobile Economy, GSMA (2023), available at https://www.gsma.com/mobileeconomy/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/270223-The-Mobile-Economy-2023.pdf.
[32] Ibid.
[33] The 5G Economy: How 5G Will Contribute to the Global Economy?, IHS Market (2019).
[34] The Impact of 5G on the European Economy, Accenture (Feb. 2021).
[35] Bowman Heiden, Jorge Padilla, & Ruud Peters, The Value of Standard Essential Patents and the Level of Licensing, 49(1) AIPLA Quarterly Journal 1, 5-6 (2021).
[36] Alexander Galetovic, Stephen Haber, & Lew Zaretzki, An Estimate of the Average Cumulative Royalty Yield in the World Mobile Phone Industry: Theory, Measurement and Results, 42 Telecommunications Policy 263 (2018); Keith Mallinson, Cumulative Mobile SEP Royalties (19 Aug. 2015); J. Gregory Sidak, What Aggregate Royalty Do Manufacturers of Mobile Phones Pay to License Standard-Essential Patents?, 1 Criterion Journal of Innovation 701 (2016).
[37] The Commission noted that SEP royalty payments in the mobile-telecommunications industry generate between EUR 14–18 billion per year (see Impact Assessment, supra note 3, at 9).
[38] Raphaël De Coninck, Christoph von Muellern, Samuel Zimmermann, & Kilian Müller, SEP Royalties, Investment Incentives and Total Welfare, CRA Study 2022, (2022), at 18-19.
[39] https://www.avanci.com.
[40] Avanci Vehicle 4G, https://www.avanci.com/vehicle/4g.
[41] Victoria Waldersee & Supantha Mukherjee, Automakers Tackle Patent Hurdle in Quest for In-Car Tech, Reuters (21 Sep. 2021), available at: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/automakers-tackle-patent-hurdle-quest-in-car-tech-2022-09-21.
[42] Igor Nikolic, Injunctions Facilitate Patent Licensing Deals: Evidence from the Automotive Sector, CPI Columns Intellectual Property (Jun. 2022).
[43] LIFT: Accelerating Market Penetration and Levelling the Playing Fields, Sisvel (18 Jul. 2022), available at: https://www.sisvel.com/blog/wireless-communications/lift-levelling-the-playing-field-for-early-licensees.
[44] Impact Assessment, supra note 3, at 17.
[45] Id. at 63, 68.
[46] Impact Assessment, supra note 3, at 67; Another study found that only one out of 12 surveyed SMEs had a licence, see Joachim Henkel, Licensing Standard-Essential Patents in the IoT – A Value Chain Perspective on the Markets for Technology, 51 Research Policy 104600 (2022).
[47] Bowman Heiden & Justus Baron, A Policy Governance Framework for SEP Licensing: Assessing Private Versus Public Market Interventions (2021) available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3872493.
[48] Auer & Morris, supra note 30.
[49] Harold Demsetz, Information and Efficiency: Another Viewpoint, 12(1) The Journal of Law and Economics 1 (1969).
[50] Impact Assessment, supra note 3, at 58.
[51] Id.
[52] Id. at 50.
[53] Article 1(2) of the SEP Regulation.
[54] Impact Assessment, supra note 3, at 8.
[55] Brad Biddle, Andrew White, & Sean Woods, How Many Standards in a Laptop? (And Other Empirical Questions) (2013) available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1619440.
[56] Article 1(4) of the SEP Regulation.
[57] Article 1(3) of the SEP Regulation
[58] Impact Assessment, supra note 3, at 101.
[59] Impact Assessment, supra note 3, at 84-85.
[60] Unwired Planet v Huawei [2017] EWHC 711 (Pat).
[61] TCL v Ericsson, Case No. 8:14-cv-003410JVS-DFM (C.D. Cal. 2018); TCL v Ericsson, 943 F.3d 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2019)
[62] Interdigital v Lenovo [2023] EWHC 539 (Pat) 733.
[63] The Regulation requires that patent owners register SEPs if they want to litigate them against infringers in the courts of Member States (Article 20(1)). Patent owners may simply decide to litigate outside the EU. As a result, they do not register SEPs and completely avoid conducting essentiality checks or going into mandatory FRAND determinations.
[64] Rory O’Neil, Breaking: UPC Chief Urges EU to Rethink SEP Plan, ManagingIP (30 May 2023), available at: https://www.managingip.com/article/2bqbfr0uyrki1fniy9ou8/breaking-upc-chief-urges-eu-to-rethink-sep-plan.
[65] Baron et al., supra note 2, at 110.
[66] Florian Mueller, EU-Only SEP Register Can’t Serve as a Basis for Global FRAND Determinations: Proposed EU Regulation on Standard-Essential Patents Suffers from Incongruent Provisions, FossPatents (4 Jun. 2023), available at: http://www.fosspatents.com/2023/06/eu-only-sep-register-cant-serve-as.html.
[67] Impact Assessment, supra note 3, at 8.
[68] Jonathan Barnett, Antitrust Mercantilism: The Strategic Devaluation of Intellectual Property Right in Wireless Markets, Berkeley Journal of Law & Technology (forthcoming); see also Jeanne Suchodolski, Suzanne Harrison, & Bowman Heiden, Innovation Warfare, 22 North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology 175 (2020).
[69] DS611: China-Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights, World Trade Organization (2022), available at: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds611_e.htm.
[70] Impact Assessment, supra note 3, at 11 (84% of EU-based standard implementers are SMEs).
[71] Impact Assessment, supra note 3, at 67.
[72] European Commission, Recommendation of 6 May 2003 Concerning the Definition of Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (2003) C 1422.
[73] Ruud Peters, Igor Nikolic, & Bowman Heiden, Designing SEP Licensing Negotiation Groups to Reduce Patent Holdout in 5G/IoT Markets in Jonathan Barnett & Sean O’Connor (eds), 5G and Beyond: Intellectual Property and Competition Policy in the Internet of Things (Cambridge University Press 2023).
[74] Contribution to the Debate on SEPs, Group of Experts on Licensing and Valuation of Standard Essential Patents (2021), available at: https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/45217; for commentary, see Nikolic, supra note 59.
[75] Michael Mattioli & Robert P. Merges, Measuring the Costs and Benefits of Patent Pools, 78(2) Ohio State Law Journal 281 (2017).
Popular Media Definition Law and political economy (hereafter LPE) is a rapidly expanding field grounded on a critical discussion of law and economics (and its “market fundamentalism”) . . .
Law and political economy (hereafter LPE) is a rapidly expanding field grounded on a critical discussion of law and economics (and its “market fundamentalism”) within the legal community. According to Aber and Parker (2022), LPE “is a critical approach to law that is focused on the way that purportedly neutral legal rules shape economic power, disguise the political and ideological choices behind inequality, and insulate “the economy” from democratic control.”
