Injunctive Relief in Disputes Related to Standard-Essential Patents: Time for the CJEU to Set Fair and Reasonable Presumptions

"On 29 April 2014, the European Commission adopted a decision in two leading competition cases concerning the use of injunctions concerning patents that are necessary in order to implement a standard (so-called “standard-essential patents”, or SEPs). In Motorola, the Commission found that Motorola abused its dominant position by seeking the enforcement of injunctions for one of its SEPs against Apple for the implementation of the 2G ETSI standard. Similarly, in Samsung, the Commission adopted the commitments offered by Samsung to address the competitive concern arising from its claims for injunctive relief against Apple before German, Italian, Dutch and French courts for its SEPs in the 3G standard."

" The central issue of this paper is whether EU competition law should dictate a standard for granting injunctions in standard-essential patent disputes and, if so, what the appropriate rule (or standard) should be."