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How do regulators decide if licensing is according to FRAND terms?

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Published by a LexisNexis Competition expert
Published on: 21 November 2013
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Purpose of FRAND terms

Occasionally, companies involved in high-tech industries co-operate to devise common standards. For example, mobile telephone operators co-operate on issues such as ensuring interoperability, like GSM, 3G and 4G, often through an agency like the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.

Where a company contributes its patented technology to a common standard, it must agree in return to license the relevant patents to competitors on FRAND terms (ie terms which are fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory). However, there is scope for dispute.

FRAND terms are designed to ensure that essential protected technology incorporated in a standard is accessible to all the users of that standard

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Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom
Key definition:
Interoperability definition
What does Interoperability mean?

The technical features of a group of interconnected systems (systems includes equipment owned and operated by the customer which is attached to the public electronic communications network) which ensure end-to-end provision of a given service in a consistent and predictable way.

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