Skip to content Skip to navigation

Lecture - Patent War Saga: Battles Among Smart Phone Giants

When: Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - 15:00 to 17:00
Venue: SMU School of Law Level 2, Seminar room 2.02 55, Armenian Street, Singapore 179943

Synopsis

The patent war for the last years among smart phone giants including Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm gave rise to many novel legal and economic issues in the field of competition law and intellectual property (IP) law, such as FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discrimination) licensing of standard essential patents (SEPs). It will be useful to draw lessons from the recent developments in the major cases and experiences of competition authorities, as the interface between competition law and IP law continues to evolve and challenging issues continues to emerge due to the conflict of interests among stakeholders. Licensing negotiations over SEPs for the next generation standards such as 5G, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and Internet of Things (IoT), driverless vehicles are imminent and the stakes are very high, especially in Asia.

This lecture aims to provide a full picture of the Great Patent War Saga and its implications. I will begin with an analysis of the importance and extensive use of patents to develop current smart phones and mobile communication.  I will extensively deal with the background, history, industry interests and impacts to market, the legal reasoning underlying the current jurisprudence. The lecture will also highlight the roles of competition law in dealing with the problems of patent misuse (abuse) as the traditional treatment by IP law has serious limits to address complicated issues of enhancing innovation and consumer welfare. Focus will be placed on major cases including private disputes like Samsung v. Apple and Apple v. Motorola Mobility, and public prosecutions including the Samsung case in EU and Qualcomm cases in EU, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and US.

Significant market impact of the SEPs warrants careful treatment to avoid potential side effects and unintended consequences of law enforcement that might adversely affect innovation. This lecture will chronicle how the pendulum swung, principally from the view of balancing competing interests, priorities, and market effects. Competition law regulation against the abuse of SEPs developed first in the US, strengthened in EU, and now being further elaborated in Asia due to the growth of the IT industry and active IP enforcers in the region. It will be interesting to see how different jurisdictions around the world converge or diverge on the substantive matter. I will address the current consensus and some remaining disagreements to be explored. The comprehensive account of the Great Patent War Saga will have broader policy implication for the upcoming legal disputes. 

 

Speaker

Hwang LEE is a Professor at the Korea University School of Law since 2008. His academic interest covers competition laws, intellectual property rights, telecommunication laws, and economic regulations.

Prior to joining Korea University, Professor Lee served the Korea Fair Trade Commission for twelve years while playing a leading role in prosecuting big cases including the Microsoft Tying Case. Subsequently, he was appointed to a Research Counsel for the Justices of the Supreme Court of Korea (2006). In this role he drafted final judgments for an extensive array of competition and administrative law cases, including the landmark POSCO Decision (2007) that set the liability standard about abuse of dominance from the effects-based approach.

In 2010, Professor Lee established the Innovation, Competition & Regulation Law Center (“ICR Law Center”), a research institution that specializes in interdisciplinary research of intellectual property rights, competition laws, and economic regulations. In 2013, he launched the Korea-China market & Regulation Law Center (“MRLC”) with colleagues at the Remin University Law School in China that explores competition and IPR issues in Asia.

Professor Lee often teaches at foreign institutions including U.S. and China, and also speaks frequently at diverse international conferences including events hosted by the American Bar Association, Global Competition Review, etc.

Professor Lee earned LL.B. from Korea University and J.D. & LL.M. from Columbia Law School in New York where he was an Executive Editor of the Columbia Journal of Asian Law.

 

Chair

Kung-Chung LIU holds an LL.B. and LL.M. from National Taiwan University and a Doctorate from the Ludwig Maximilian Universitaet (University of Munich). He was a Research Fellow at Academia Sinica, Taiwan until 2017. In 2003, he was a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow for the IP Academy of Singapore. Professor Liu has served as one of the founding Commissioners of the National Communications Commission in Taiwan between 2006 and 2007. In 2014-15, he was a Visiting Professor at the School of Law, Singapore Management University, and the Founding Director of the Applied Research Centre for Intellectual Assets and the Law in Asia (ARCIALA). In addition, he has been co-appointed Professor at the Renmin University, China (2017), and the Graduate Institute of Technology, Innovation & Intellectual Property Management, National Chengchi University, Taiwan (since 2010).

 

Programme

2.30pm - Registration

3.00pm – Lecture by Professor Lee

4.30pm – Discussion and Q & A

5.00pm - End of Event
 

Public CPD Points - 1.5 points 

This programme is an Accredited CPD Activity under the SILE’s CPD Scheme. Participants who wish to claim CPD Points are reminded that they must comply strictly with the Attendance Policy set out in the CPD Guidelines. This includes signing-in on arrival and signing-out at the conclusion of the activity in the manner required by the organiser, and not being absent from the entire activity for more than 15 minutes. Participants who do not comply with the Attendance Policy will not be able to obtain CPD Points for attending the activity. Please refer to http://www.silecpdcentre.sg for more information.
 

Click here for the newsletter and registration link.

Last updated on 12 Jun 2019 .