<p>Patent hold-out is a problem that continues to hamstring innovators in the U.S. and beyond, InterDigital’s Chief Public Policy and Communications Officer Rob Stien detailed in an editorial in RealClearPolicy. When a company delays taking a license to utilize an innovator’s patents, it often drags patent owners into long and costly litigation and disrupts the innovation lifecycle through which companies use licensing to generate a return on their R&D to help fuel future innovation.</p>
<p>For the last two years the American company Sonos, a leading player in the connected speaker market, has been embroiled in high-stakes litigation with Google, after accusing the tech giant of infringing several of its patents.</p>
<p>This fight is taking place in courtrooms in the U.S. and Europe and, for the most part, the tide has been turning towards Sonos, especially following a January decision from the International Trade Commission (ITC). The ITC recently upheld a decision to issue an exclusion order preventing the importation of Google products that had been found to infringe five of Sonos’s patents.</p>
<p>Despite that ruling, Google has yet to take a license to Sonos’s patent portfolio – just the latest example of how patent hold-out harms U.S. innovators. You can read more in Rob’s complete editorial on <a href="https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/02/08/how_america_is_failing_its_innovators_815647.html">RealClearPolicy, here.</a></p>
InterDigital’s Rob Stien on How Patent Hold-Out is Undermining America’s Innovators
Feb 2022/ Posted By: InterDigital Comms