Corporate & Securities Law

UHF RFID Patent Consortium Licensing Approved

By David Fischer

Too often we focus on noisy conflicts, but sometimes the dog that does not bark is just as important (especially for practicing attorneys).  Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would not challenge a “proposal by a consortium of companies to jointly license patents needed to comply with standards for ultra high frequency radio frequency identification (UHF RFID) technology ….”  PC World reports:

Last November, consortium members — 3M, France Telecom, Hewlett-Packard, LG Electronics, Motorola, ThingMagic and Zebra Technologies — formed a limited liability partnership to jointly license their RFID-related patents using “reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms,” the DOJ said. The companies requested the DOJ conduct a business review to determine that the partnership didn’t break any U.S. antitrust laws.

Under the consortium plan, an independent licensing agent will offer nonexclusive licenses to other companies interested in adopting RFID.

The patents address a UHF RFID standard endorsed in 2006 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The so-called Generation-2 standard was originally created by EPCglobal, a private RFID standards group.

DOJ’s letter (with all 50 footnotes) is available online, as the press release.

Full post as published by Antitrust Review on October 22, 2008 (boomark / email).