Can Standard-Setting Lead to Exploitative Abuse? A Dissonant View on Patent Hold-Up, Royalty Stacking and the Meaning of Frand

"Standard-setting activities, which aim to achieve device interoperability and product compatibility, play a fundamental role in fostering innovation and competition in a variety of markets. Such activities, typically carried out by armies of engineers, would generally not be expected to fascinate lawyers and economists. But they do—and they have recently received much attention as a result of high-profile cases, complaints lodged with competition authorities, and attempts by members of standard-setting organisations (SSOs) to have their rules and procedures modified to prevent allegedly anti-competitive outcomes. There seems to be a growing perception, largely fed by certain interest groups, that current standard-setting procedures generally based on the so-called FRAND licensing regime unduly allow opportunistic holders of intellectual property (IP) embedded in a standard to extract excessive royalties from their licensees."