Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-2015
Journal Title
Duke Law & Technology Review
ISSN
2328-9600
Abstract
This paper focuses on two types of licenses that can best be describes as outlier - FRAND and compulsory licenses. Overall, these two specific forms of licenses share the objective of producing a fair and reasonable license of a technology protected by intellectual property. The comparable objective notwithstanding, each type of license achieves this end using different mechanisms. The FRAND license emphasizes providing the licensee with reasonable terms, e.g., by preventing a standard patent holder from extracting unreasonably high royalty rates. By contrast, compulsory liceses emphasize the public benefit that flows from enabling access to an otherwise inaccessible invention. Ultimately, both forms of license attempt to create a value for the licensed product that can be remarkably different from the product's true market value. Nevertheless, both forms ultimately benefit the end-consumer who pays less to access a product subject ot either of these forms of license. In comparing these two forms of licenses, the paper hopes to determine whether one form is better than the other, and if so, from whose perspective - the consumer, the licensor or the licensee. In doing so, this paper compares the different prevailing efforts to embrace such licenses as well as the impact of such licenses on the industry.
First Page
83
Last Page
120
Num Pages
37
Volume Number
14
Issue Number
1
Publisher
Duke University School of Law
Recommended Citation
Srividhya Ragavan, Brendan Murphy & Raj Davé,
FRAND v. Compulsory Licensing: The Lesser of the Two Evils,
14
Duke L. & Tech. Rev.
83
(2015).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/725