FTC Extends Deadline to Comment on Patents and Standard-Setting Project

The Federal Trade Commission is extending the deadline for public comments on standard setting until August 5, 2011. The FTC hosted a public workshop on June 21, 2011 as part of a project to examine the legal and policy issues surrounding the competition problem of potential “hold-up” when patented technologies are included in collaborative standards.

The FTC workshop examined three ways to try to prevent such hold-up: 1) patent disclosure rules of standard-setting organizations; 2) commitments given by patent holders that they will license users of the standard on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms; and 3) disclosure of licensing terms by patent holders before the standard is adopted. The agency intends to examine these issues from practical, economic and legal perspectives, and under antitrust, contract and patent law.

In conjunction with the workshop, the FTC published a Federal Register notice seeking the views of consumers and the legal, academic, and business communities on the issues to be explored in this project, stating that comments could be filed until July 8, 2011. The deadline for filing comments has now been extended until August 5, 2011.

Comments can be filed in electronic form by clicking here and following the instructions on the web-based form. They will be made publicly available on the FTC’s website.

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