A cross-licensing agreement is an agreement between two parties, where each side grants intellectual property rights to the other side. In everyday life, the term is a cross-licensing agreement.
Content
Patent Law
In patent law, a cross-licensing agreement is an agreement under which two or more parties license each other party to use the subject of a patent claim in one or more of their patents. [1] Very often, patents held by the parties protect various key aspects of a particular commercial product. Consequently, through cross-licensing, each of the parties retains the right to supply a commercial product to the market. The term “cross-licensing” implies that neither party pays cash deductions to the other party, however, such cases are not excluded.
For example, Microsoft and JVC in January 2008 entered into a cross-license agreement. [2] Therefore, each party may apply inventions protected by patents included in the agreement. [3] This provides competition benefits by providing more freedom to design products that contain components that are protected by other patents without causing patent infringement lawsuits.
Parties that enter into a cross-license agreement must be careful not to violate antitrust laws and regulations.
Some companies file patent applications, mainly to cross-license the patents they receive in order to counter competitors' attempts to stop the product from being delivered to the market. [4] For example, Taiwanese ODM manufacturers, such as Hon Hai , rapidly increased patent applications in the early 1990s after US competitors filed patent infringement lawsuits against them. [5] They used patents for cross-licensing.
One of the limitations of cross-licensing is that it is not effective against patent holders . Holders produce little, which means they do not need other people's patents. Their main business is to provide licenses for deductions. Often such companies are derogatoryly called " patent trolls ."
Notes
- ↑ Shapiro, Carl, “Navigating the Patent Thicket: Cross Licenses, Patent Pools, and Standard Setting” Innovation Policy and the Economy, MIT Press2001, p119 et seq. (eng.)
- ↑ Ed Oswald, “Microsoft, JVC agree to cross-license patents” eFront | BetaNews January 16, 2008, 2:29 PM
- ↑ The agreement does not necessarily include all patents owned by the parties
- ↑ ア ー カ イ ブ さ れ た コ ピ ー . Date of treatment September 15, 2006. Archived September 1, 2006. Patent Flooding
- ↑ Mark Nowotarski, “Introducing Patents into a Major Service Industry” Licensing Executives Society International | les Nouvelles, March 2003
See also
- Patent