This Handbook is particularly important because of the increasingly critical role standards play in our economy. Within the broad scope of this Handbook are quality standards, informational standards, uniformity standards, interoperability standards and non-products standards such as professional conduct standards. These standards promote innovation, productive efficiency, and market structure. The Handbook describes how the antitrust laws balance these procompetitive effects against the potential mususe of standards, and the sandard-setting process, to create barriers to entry, retard innovation, raise rivals' cists, facilitate collusion, and protect market position. The Handbook also recognizes the increasing role played by governments - federal, state and interantional - in the promulgation of standards, and how that impacts the application of the antitrust laws. Finally, the Handbook addresses the remedies available to redress the effects of standards-related activity found to be unlawful.

Technical standards are ubiquitous in the modern networked economy. They allow products made and sold by different vendors to interoperate with little to no consumer effort and enable new market entrants to innovate on top of established technology platforms. This groundbreaking volume, edited by Jorge L. Contreras, assesses and analyzes the legal aspects of technical standards and standardization. Bringing together more than thirty leading international scholars, advocates, and policymakers, it focuses on two of the most contentious and critical areas pertaining to standards today in key jurisdictions around the world: antitrust/competition law and patent law. (A subsequent volume will focus on international trade, copyright, and administrative law.) This comprehensive, detailed examination sheds new light on the standards that shape the global technology marketplace and will serve as an indispensable tool for scholars, practitioners, judges, and policymakers everywhere.

Offering in-depth analysis of the case law currently being written in courtrooms all over the world under the so-called •patent warê, the book puts forward a new method for applying competition law to standards and standard-setting _ in both its collus

Effective communication requires a common language, a truth that applies to science and mathematics as much as it does to culture and conversation. Standards and Standardization: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications addresses the necessity of a common system of measurement in all technical communications and endeavors, in addition to the need for common rules and guidelines for regulating such enterprises. This multivolume reference will be of practical and theoretical significance to researchers, scientists, engineers, teachers, and students in a wide array of disciplines.

Competition and intellectual property rights (IPRs) are both necessary for a market to work efficiently and to promote consumer welfare. Properly applied, intellectual property rules define a legal framework which allows undertakings to profit from their inventions. This in turn encourages competition among firms and enhances dynamic efficiency, to the benefit of consumer welfare. Standard setting represents one of the fields where the interaction between competition law and IPRs clearly comes to light. The collaborative goal of standard setting organizations (SSOs) is to adopt and promote standards that either do not conflict with anyone’s right or, if they do, are developed under condition that patents are licensed under defined terms. This book examines the tension between IPRs and competition in the standard setting field which can arise when innovators over-exploit the rights they have been granted and hold up an entire industry. The book compares EU and U.S. jurisdictions with a particular focus on the IT and telecommunication sectors. It scrutinizes those practices which could harm standard setting and its goals, looking at misleading conducts by SSOs’ members which may lead to breach the EU and U.S. antitrust provisions on abuse of market power. Recent developments in EU and U.S. standard setting are analysed highlighting the differences in enforcement approaches. The book considers how the optimal balance between IPRs and industry standards can be struck, suggesting a policy model which takes into account both innovators’ interests and SSOs’ goals.

Rev. ed. of : Antitrust law developments (fifth). c2002.