U.S. Philips Corp. v. International Trade Commission
U.S. Court of Appeals9/21/2005
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United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
04-1361
U.S. PHILIPS CORPORATION,
Appellant,
v.
INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMMISSION,
Appellee,
and
PRINCO CORPORATION, PRINCO AMERICA CORPORATION,
GIGASTORAGE CORPORATION TAIWAN,
GIGASTORAGE CORPORATION USA, and LINBERG ENTERPRISE INC.,
Intervenors.
A. Douglas Melamed, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, of
Washington, DC, argued for appellant. With him on the brief were William J. Kolasky,
Edward C. DuMont, Jonathan G. Cedarbaum, and Barbara R. Blank.
Clara Kuehn, Attorney, Office of General Counsel, United States International
Trade Commission, of Washington, DC, argued for appellee. With her on the brief were
James M. Lyons, Acting General Counsel, and Wayne W. Herrington, Acting Deputy
General Counsel for Litigation.
Alan D. Smith, Fish & Richardson P.C., of Boston, Massachusetts, argued for
intervenors. With him on the brief were Charles H. Sanders of Boston, Massachusetts;
and Richard G. Green and Tina M. Chappell, of Washington, DC. Of counsel was
Ahmed J. Davis, of Washington, DC.
John DeQ. Briggs, III, Howrey Simon Arnold & White, LLP, of Washington, DC,
for amicus curiae Intellectual Property Owners Association. With him on the brief were
Marc G. Schildkraut and Joseph P. Lavelle. Of counsel on the brief was J. Jeffrey
Hawley, President, Intellectual Property Owners Association, of Washington, DC.
David F. Ryan, Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto, of New York, New York, for
amicus curiae New York Intellectual Property Law Association. With him on the brief
was Matthew S. Seidner. Of counsel on the brief was John D. Murnane, President,
New York Intellectual Property Law Association, of New York, New York. Of counsel
was Joseph B. Divinagracia.
Appealed from: United States International Trade Commission
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
04-1361
U.S. PHILIPS CORPORATION,
Appellant,
v.
INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMMISSION,
Appellee,
and
PRINCO CORPORATION, PRINCO AMERICA CORPORATION,
GIGASTORAGE CORPORATION TAIWAN,
GIGASTORAGE CORPORATION USA, and LINBERG ENTERPRISE INC.,
Intervenors.
___________________________
DECIDED: September 21, 2005
___________________________
Before BRYSON, GAJARSA, and LINN, Circuit Judges.
BRYSON, Circuit Judge.
U.S. Philips Corporation appeals from a final order of the United States
International Trade Commission, in which the Commission held six of Philipsâs patents
for the manufacture of compact discs to be unenforceable because of patent misuse.
The Commission ruled that Philips had employed an impermissible tying arrangement
because it required prospective licensees to license packages of patents rather than
allowing them to choose which individual patents they wished to license and making the
licensing fee correspond to the particular patents designated by the licensees. In re
Certain Recordable Compact Discs & Rewritable Compact Discs, Inv. No. 337-TA-474
(Int'l Trade Comm'n Mar. 25, 2004). We reverse and remand.
I
Philips owns patents to technology for manufacturing recordable compact discs
(âCD-Rsâ) and rewritable compact discs (âCD-RWsâ) in accordance with the technical
standards set forth in a publication called the Recordable CD Standard (the âOrange
Bookâ), jointly authored by Philips and Sony Corporation. Since the 1990s, Philips has
been licensing those patents through package licenses. Philips specified that the same
royalty was due for each disc manufactured by the licensee using patents included in
the package, regardless of how many of the patents were used. Potential licensees
who sought to license patents to the technology for manufacturing CD-Rs or CD-RWs
were not allowed to license those patents individually and were not offered a lower
royalty rate for licenses to fewer than all the patents in a package.
Initially, Philips offered four different pools of patents for licensing: (1) a joint CD-
R patent pool that included patents owned by Philips and two other companies (Sony
and Taiyo Yuden); (2) a joint CD-RW patent pool that included patents owned by Philips
and two other companies (Sony and Ricoh); (3) a CD-R patent pool that included only
patents owned by Philips; and (4) a CD-RW patent pool that included only patents
owned by Philips. After 2001, Philips offered additional package options by grouping its
patents into two categories, which Philips denominated âessentialâ and ânonessentialâ
for producing compact discs compliant with the technical standards set forth in the
Orange Book.
04-1361 2
In the late 1990s, Philips entered into package licensing agreements with Princo
Corporation and Princo America Corporation (collectively, âPrincoâ); GigaStorage
Corporation Taiwan and GigaStorage Corporation USA (collectively, âGigaStorageâ);
and Linberg Enterprise Inc. (âLinbergâ). Soon after entering into the agreements,
however, Princo, GigaStorage, and Linberg stopped paying the licensing fees. Philips
filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission that Princo, GigaStorage, and
Linberg, among others, were violating section 337(a)(1)(B) of the Tariff Act of 1930, 19
U.S.C. § 1337(a)(1)(B), by importing into the United States certain CD-Rs and CD-RWs
that infringed six of Philipsâs patents.
The Commission instituted an investigation and identified 19 respondents,
including GigaStorage and Linberg. Additional respondents, including Princo, were
added through intervention. In the course of the proceedings before an administrative
law judge, the respondents raised patent misuse as an affirmative defense, alleging that
Philips had improperly forced them, as a condition of licensing patents that were
necessary to manufacture CD-Rs or CD-RWs, to take licenses to other patents that
were not necessary to manufacture those products. In particular, the respondents
argued that a number of the patents that Philips had included in the category of
âessentialâ patents were actually not essential for manufacturing compact discs
compliant with the Orange Book standards, because there were commercially viable
alternative methods of manufacturing CD-Rs and CD-RWs that did not require the use
of the technology covered by those patents. The allegedly nonessential patents
included U.S. Patent Nos. 5,001,692 (âthe Farla patentâ), 5,740,149 (âthe Iwasaki
patentâ), Re. 34,719 (âthe Yamamoto patentâ), and 5,060,219 (âthe Lokhoff patentâ).
04-1361 3
The administrative law judge ruled that the intervenors had infringed various
claims of the six asserted Philips patents. The administrative law judge further ruled,
however, that all six of the asserted patents were unenforceable by reason of patent
misuse. Among the grounds invoked by the administrative law judge for finding patent
misuse was his conclusion that the package licensing arrangements constituted tying
arrangements that were illegal under analogous antitrust law principles and thus
rendered the subject patents unenforceable.
Philips petitioned the Commission for review of the administrative law judgeâs
decision. In an order that addressed only the findings concerning patent misuse, the
Commission affirmed the administrative law judgeâs ruling that Philipsâs package
licensing practice âconstitutes patent misuse per se as a tying arrangement between (1)
licenses to patents that are essential to manufacture CD-Rs or CD-RWs according to
Orange Book standards and (2) licenses to other patents that are not essential to that
activity.â The Commission found that the Farla, Iwasaki, Yamamoto, and Lokhoff
patents were not essential to manufacturing CD-Rs or CD-RWs. Specifically, the
Commission found that the Farla and Lokhoff patents were nonessential with respect to
the Philips-only CD-RW and CD-R licenses, and that the Farla, Iwasaki, Yamamoto,
and Lokhoff patents were nonessential with respect to the joint CD-RW license. The
Commission concluded that the four nonessential patents were impermissibly tied to
patents that were essential to manufacturing CD-Rs and CD-RWs, because ânone of
the so-called essential patents could be licensed individually for the manufacture of CD-
RWs and CD-Rs apart from the packageâ that Philips denominated as âessential.â The
Commission also found, based on the administrative law judgeâs findings and analysis,
04-1361 4
that the joint license for CD-R and CD-RW technology unlawfully tied patents for CD-Rs
and CD-RWs in accordance with the Orange Book standards to patents that were not
essential to manufacture such discs.
The Commission explained why it concluded that each of the four patents was
nonessential. According to the Commission, the Farla and Iwasaki patents were not
essential because there was an economically viable alternative method of writing
information to discs that did not require the producer to practice those patents; the
Yamamoto patent was not essential because there was a potential alternative method
of creating master discs that did not require the producer to practice that patent; and the
Lokhoff patent was not essential because there were alternative possible methods of
accomplishing copy protection that did not require the producer to practice that patent.
Based on those findings, the Commission concluded that the four ânonessentialâ patents
constituted separate products from the patents that were essential to the manufacture of
the subject discs.
The Commission ruled that Philipsâs patent package licensing arrangement
constituted per se patent misuse because Philips did not give prospective licensees the
option of licensing individual patents (presumably for a lower fee) rather than licensing
one or more of the patent packages as a whole. The Commission took no position on
the administrative law judgeâs ruling that patent pooling arrangements between Philips
and its colicensors constituted patent misuse per se based on the theories of price fixing
and price discrimination, and it took no position on the administrative law judgeâs
conclusion that the royalty structure of the patent pools was an unreasonable restraint
of trade.
04-1361 5
As an alternative ground, the Commission concluded that even if Philipsâs patent
package licensing practice was not per se patent misuse, it constituted patent misuse
under the rule of reason. Adopting the administrative law judgeâs findings, the
Commission ruled that the anticompetitive effects of including nonessential patents in
the packages of so-called essential patents outweighed the procompetitive effects of
that practice. In particular, the Commission held that including such nonessential
patents in the licensing packages could foreclose alternative technologies and injure
competitors seeking to license such alternative technologies to parties who needed to
obtain licenses to Philipsâs âessentialâ patents. The Commission took no position with
respect to the portion of the administrative law judgeâs rule of reason analysis in which
the administrative law judge concluded that the royalty rate structure of the patent
pooling arrangements constituted an unreasonable restraint on competition.
Philips took this appeal from the Commissionâs order.
II
Patent misuse is an equitable defense to patent infringement. It âarose to
restrain practices that did not in themselves violate any law, but that drew
anticompetitive strength from the patent right, and thus were deemed to be contrary to
public policy.â Mallinckrodt, Inc. v. Medipart, Inc., 976 F.2d 700, 704 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
The purpose of the patent misuse defense âwas to prevent a patentee from using the
patent to obtain market benefit beyond that which inheres in the statutory patent right.â
Id. As the Supreme Court has explained, the doctrine of patent misuse bars a patentee
from using the âpatentâs leverageâ to âextend the monopoly of his patent to derive a
benefit not attributable to the use of the patentâs teachings,â such as requiring a licensee
04-1361 6
to pay a royalty on products that do not use the teaching of the patent. Zenith Radio
Corp. v. Hazeltine Res., Inc., 395 U.S. 100, 135-36 (1969). The âkey inquiry is whether,
by imposing conditions that derive their force from the patent, the patentee has
impermissibly broadened the scope of the patent grant with anticompetitive effect.â
C.R. Bard, Inc. v. M3 Sys., Inc., 157 F.3d 1340, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 1998); Windsurfing Intâl,
Inc. v. AMF, Inc., 782 F.2d 995, 1001 (Fed. Cir. 1986).
This court summarized the principles of patent misuse as applied to âtyingâ
arrangements in Virginia Panel Corp. v. MAC Panel Co., 133 F.3d 860, 868-69 (Fed.
Cir. 1997). The court there explained that because of the importance of anticompetitive
effects in shaping the defense of patent misuse, the analysis of tying arrangements in
the context of patent misuse is closely related to the analysis of tying arrangements in
antitrust law. The court further explained that, depending on the circumstances, tying
arrangements can be viewed as per se patent misuse or can be analyzed under the rule
of reason. Id. The court noted that certain specific practices have been identified as
constituting per se patent misuse, âincluding so-called âtyingâ arrangements in which a
patentee conditions a license under the patent on the purchase of a separable, staple
good, and arrangements in which a patentee effectively extends the term of its patent
by requiring post-expiration royalties.â Id. at 869 (citations omitted). If the particular
licensing arrangement in question is not one of those specific practices that has been
held to constitute per se misuse, it will be analyzed under the rule of reason. Id. We
have held that under the rule of reason, a practice is impermissible only if its effect is to
restrain competition in a relevant market. Monsanto Co. v. McFarling, 363 F.3d 1336,
1341 (Fed. Cir. 2004); Windsurfing Intâl, 782 F.2d at 1001-02.
04-1361 7
The Supreme Courtâs decisions analyzing tying arrangements under antitrust law
principles are to the same effect. The Court has made clear that tying arrangements
are deemed to be per se unlawful only if they constitute a ânaked restrain[t] of trade with
no purpose except stifling of competitionâ and âalways or almost always tend to restrict
competition and decrease outputâ in some substantial portion of a market. Broad.
Music, Inc. v. Columbia Broad. Sys., Inc., 441 U.S. 1, 19-20 (1979). The Supreme
Court has applied the per se rule only when âexperience with a particular kind of
restraint enables the Court to predict with confidence that the rule of reason will
condemn it . . . .â Arizona v. Maricopa County Med. Socây, 457 U.S. 332, 344 (1982);
see Broad. Music, 441 U.S. at 9-10 (âIt is only after considerable experience with certain
business relationships that courts classify them as per se violations.â), quoting United
States v. Topco Assocs., 405 U.S. 596, 607-08 (1972); Contâl T.V., Inc. v. GTE Sylvania
Inc., 433 U.S. 36, 49-50 (1977) (per se rules are âappropriate only when they relate to
conduct that is manifestly anticompetitiveâ); see also Jefferson Parish Hosp. Dist. v.
Hyde, 466 U.S. 2, 14 (1983) (â[T]he law draws a distinction between the exploitation of
market power by merely enhancing the price of the tying product, on the one hand, and
by attempting to impose restraints on competition in the market for a tied product, on the
other.â). Conduct is not considered per se anticompetitive if it has âredeeming
competitive virtues and . . . the search for those values is not almost sure to be in vain.â
Broad. Music, 441 U.S. at 13; Natâl Collegiate Athletic Assân v. Bd. of Regents of the
Univ. of Okla., 468 U.S. 85, 104 n. 26 (1983) (â[W]hile the court has spoken of a âper seâ
rule against tying arrangements, it has also recognized that tying may have
04-1361 8
procompetitive justifications that make it inappropriate to condemn without considerable
market analysis.â).
While the doctrine of patent misuse closely tracks antitrust law principles in many
respects, Congress has declared certain practices not to be patent misuse even though
those practices might otherwise be subject to scrutiny under antitrust law principles. In
35 U.S.C. § 271(d), Congress designated several specific practices as not constituting
patent misuse. The designated practices include âcondition[ing] the license of any rights
to the patent or the sale of the patented product on the acquisition of a license to rights
in another patent or purchase of a separate product,â unless, in view of the
circumstances, the patent owner âhas market power for the patent or patented product
on which the license or sale is conditioned.â Id. § 271(d)(5). Because the statute is
phrased in the negative, it does not require that patent misuse be found in the case of
all such conditional licenses in which the patent owner has market power; instead, the
statute simply excludes such conditional licenses in which the patent owner lacks
market power from the category of arrangements that may be found to constitute patent
misuse.
Although section 271(d)(5) does not define the scope of the defense of patent
misuse, but merely provides a safe harbor against the charge of patent misuse for
certain kinds of conduct by patentees, the statute makes clear that the defense of
patent misuse differs from traditional antitrust law principles in an important respect, as
applied to tying arrangements involving patent rights. In the case of an antitrust claim
based on a tying arrangement involving patent rights, this court has held that ownership
of a patent on the tying good is presumed to give the patentee monopoly power. See
04-1361 9
Indep. Ink, Inc. v. Ill. Tool Works, Inc., 396 F.3d 1342, 1349 n.7 (Fed. Cir.), cert.
granted, 125 S. Ct. 2937 (2005). Section 271(d)(5) makes clear, however, that such a
presumption does not apply in the case of patent misuse. To establish the defense of
patent misuse, the accused infringer must show that the patentee has power in the
market for the tying product. See id. at 1349 n.7.
Philips argues briefly that it lacks market power and that it is thus shielded from
liability by section 271(d)(5). Based on detailed analysis by the administrative law
judge, however, the Commission found that Philips has market power in the relevant
market and that section 271(d)(5) is therefore inapplicable to this case. We sustain that
ruling.
Philips contends that at the time Philips and Sony first created their package
license arrangements, CDs had significant competition among computer data storage
devices and thus Philips lacked market power in the market for computer data storage
discs. However, Philips first created the package licenses long before GigaStorage and
Princo entered into their agreements. According to the administrative law judge, the
patent package arrangements were instituted in the early 1990s. Yet Princo did not
enter into its agreement until June of 1997, and GigaStorage did not enter into its
licensing agreement until October of 1999. Thus, any lack of market power that Philips
and its colicensors may have had in the early 1990s is irrelevant to the situation in the
late 1990s, when the parties entered into the agreements at issue in this case. At that
time, according to the administrative law judgeâs well-supported finding, compact discs
had become âunique products [with] no close practice substitutes.â Philipsâs argument
about lack of market power is therefore unpersuasive, and for that reason section
04-1361 10
271(d)(5) does not provide Philips a statutory safe haven from the judicially created
defense of patent misuse.1
Apart from its specific challenge to the Commissionâs ruling on the market power
issue, Philips launches a more broad-based attack on the Commissionâs conclusion that
Philipsâs patent licensing policies constitute per se patent misuse. In so doing, Philips
makes essentially two arguments: first, that the Commission was wrong as a legal
matter in ruling that the package licensing arrangements at issue in this case are among
those few practices that the courts have identified as so clearly anticompetitive as to
warrant being condemned as per se illegal; and second, that the Commission erred as a
factual matter in concluding that Philipsâs package licensing arrangements reflect the
use of market power in one market to foreclose competition in a separate market. We
address the two arguments separately.
A
In its brief, the Commission argues that it is âhornbook lawâ that mandatory
package licensing has been held to be patent misuse. While that broad characterization
can be found in some treatises, see 6 Donald S. Chisum, Chisum on Patents § 19.04[3]
(2003), cited in C.R. Bard, Inc., 157 F.3d at 1373; 8 Ernest B. Lipscomb III, Lipscombâs
1
Before the Commission, Philips argued that section 271(d)(5) abolished
the doctrine of per se patent misuse as applied to tying arrangements. In making that
argument, Philips relied heavily on the legislative history of the 1988 Act that adopted
section 271(d)(5). Because Philips has not renewed that argument in this court, we do
not address it, although we note that the legislative history cited by Philips before the
Commission indicates congressional skepticism about treating tying arrangements in
the context of patent licensing as per se patent misuse, rather than analyzing such
arrangements under the rule of reason. See 134 Cong. Rec. 32,294-95 (1988)
(statement of Rep. Kastenmeier); id. at 32,471 (statement of Sen. DeConcini); id. at
32,471-72 (statement of Sen. Leahy).
04-1361 11
Walter on Patents § 28:27 (3d ed. 1989 & Supp. 2003), Philips invites us to consider
whether that broad proposition is sound. Upon consideration, we conclude that the
proposition as applied to the circumstances of this case is not supported by precedent
or reason.
In its opinion, the Commission acknowledged that the Virginia Panel case and
many other patent tying cases âinvolve a tying patent and a tied product, rather than a
tying patent and a tied patent.â (emphasis in original). The Commission nonetheless
concluded that âfinding patent misuse based on a tying arrangement between patents in
a mandatory package license is a reasonable application of Supreme Court precedent.â
In so ruling, the Commission relied primarily on two Supreme Court cases: United
States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 U.S. 131, 156-59 (1948), and United States v.
Loewâs, Inc., 371 U.S. 38, 44-51 (1962). Those cases condemned the practice of
âblock-bookingâ movies to theaters (in the Paramount case) and to television stations (in
the Loewâs case) as antitrust violations.
Block-booking is the practice in which a distributor licenses one feature or group
of features to exhibitors on the condition that the exhibitors agree to license another
(presumably inferior) feature or group of features released by the distributor during a
given period. In Paramount and Loewâs, the Court held that block-booking, as practiced
in those cases, was per se illegal. The Commission reasoned that the practice of block-
booking that was the focus of the Courtâs condemnation in Paramount and Loewâs is
similar to the package licensing agreements at issue in this case and that under the
analysis employed in Paramount and Loewâs, Philipsâs package licensing agreements
must be condemned as per se patent misuse.
04-1361 12
We do not agree with the Commission that the decisions in Paramount and
Loewâs govern this case. In Paramount, the district court held that the defendant movie
distributor had engaged in unlawful conduct because it offered to permit exhibitors to
show the films they wished to license only if they agreed to license and exhibit other
films that they were not interested in licensing. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling.
The Court held that block-booking was illegal because it âprevents competitors from
bidding for single features on their individual merits,â and because it âadds to the
monopoly of a single copyrighted picture that of another copyrighted picture which must
be taken and exhibited in order to secure the first.â 334 U.S. at 156-57. The result, the
Court explained, âis to add to the monopoly of the copyright in violation of the principle
of the patent cases involving tying clauses.â Id. at 158.
Because the block-booking arrangement at issue in Paramount required the
licensee to exhibit all of the films in the group for which a license was taken, the
Paramount block-booking was more akin to a tying arrangement in which a patent
license is tied to the purchase of a separate product, rather than to an arrangement in
which a patent license is tied to another patent license. Indeed, all of the patent tying
cases to which the Supreme Court referred in Paramount involved tying arrangements
in which, as the Court described them, âthe owner of a patent [conditioned] its use on
the purchase or use of patented or unpatented materials.â 334 U.S. at 157. Because
the arrangement in the Paramount case was equivalent in substance to a patent-to-
product tying arrangement, Paramount does not stand for the proposition that a pure
04-1361 13
patent-to-patent tying arrangement, such as Philipsâs package licensing agreement, is
per se unlawful.2
Philips gives its licensees the option of using any of the patents in the package,
at the licenseeâs option. Philips charges a uniform licensing fee to manufacture discs
covered by its patented technology, regardless of which, or how many, of the patents in
the package the licensee chooses to use in its manufacturing process. In particular,
Philipsâs package licenses do not require that licensees actually use the technology
covered by any of the patents that the Commission characterized as nonessential. In
that respect, Philipsâs licensing agreements are different from the agreements at issue
in Paramount, which imposed an obligation on the purchasers of package licenses to
exhibit films they did not wish to license. That obligation not only extended the
exclusive right in one product to products in which the distributor did not have exclusive
rights, but it also precluded exhibitors, as a practical matter, from exhibiting other films
that they may have preferred over the tied films they were required to exhibit. Because
Philipsâs package licensing agreements do not compel the licensees to use any
particular technology covered by any of the licensed patents, the Paramount case is not
a sound basis from which to conclude that the package licensing arrangements at issue
in this case constitute patent misuse per se.
2
The Commission argues that the Supreme Courtâs later decision in Automatic
Radio Co. v. Hazeltine, 339 U.S. 827 (1950), supports its broad interpretation of the
Paramount case because the Supreme Court in Automatic Radio characterized
Paramount as having âcondemnedâ an arrangement âconditioning the granting of a
license under one patent upon the acceptance of another and different license.â Id. at
830-31. We do not, however, interpret that shorthand characterization of Paramount as
effecting a broadening of the holding of the earlier case and an extension of its rationale
to a class of cases far beyond Paramountâs facts.
04-1361 14
In the Loewâs case, the district court determined that the licensee television
stations were required to pay fees not only for the feature films they wanted, but also for
additional, inferior films. As in Paramount, the fact that the package arrangement
required the television stations to purchase exhibition rights for the package at a price
that was greater than the price attributable to the desired films made the tying
arrangement very much like a tying arrangement involving products. Thus, the
Supreme Court explained that a âsubstantial portion of the licensing fees represented
the cost of the inferior films which the stations were required to accept.â Loweâs, 371
U.S. at 49. Following the approach employed in Paramount, the Supreme Court applied
the principles of cases involving tying arrangements between patents and unpatented
products and concluded that the tying arrangements in the case before it had all the
anticompetitive features of the block-booking arrangements in Paramount and no
redeeming procompetitive features.
In this case, unlike in Loewâs, there is no evidence that a portion of the royalty
was attributable to the patents that the Commission characterized as nonessential.
While the administrative law judge found that GigaStorage âinquired into obtaining a
license to less than all of the patents on Philipsâs patent list,â the administrative law
judge noted that GigaStorage did so because it âhoped that by eliminating some patents
the royalty rate would be lower.â There is no evidence that GigaStorage had any basis
for its expectation that a smaller patent package might result in a lower royalty rate. In
fact, the administrative law judge found that Philips had responded to that overture from
GigaStorage by explaining that âthe royalty is the same regardless of the number of
patents used.â Moreover, the administrative law judge found that the royalty rate for
04-1361 15
licensing Philipsâs patents âremains the same regardless of which option(s) in the
agreement one selects,â and that the royalty rate âdoes not increase or decrease if more
or fewer patents are used.â Thus, it is clear that the royalty charged by Philips was not
increased because of the inclusion of the Farla, Iwasaki, Yamamoto, and Lokhoff
patents. There is therefore no basis for conjecture that a hypothetical licensing fee
would have been lower if Philips had offered to license the patents on an individual
basis or in smaller packages.
Aside from Paramount and Loewâs, the Commission relies on cases involving
tying arrangements in which the patent owner conditions the availability of a patent
license on the patenteeâs agreement to purchase a staple item of commerce from the
patentee. See Va. Panel, 133 F.3d at 869; Senza-Gel Corp. v. Seiffhart, 803 F.2d 661
(Fed. Cir. 1986). Those cases, however, are readily distinguishable because of the
fundamental difference between an obligation to purchase a product and the extension
of a nonexclusive license to practice a patent.
A nonexclusive patent license is simply a promise not to sue for infringement.
See Rite-Hite Corp. v. Kelley Co., 56 F.3d 1538, 1552 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (en banc);
Spindelfabrik Suessen-Schurr Stahlecker & Grill GmbH v. Schubert & Salzer
Maschinenfabrik Atkiengesellschaft, 829 F.2d 1075, 1081 (Fed. Cir. 1987). The
conveyance of such a license does not obligate the licensee to do anything; it simply
provides the licensee with a guarantee that it will not be sued for engaging in conduct
that would infringe the patent in question.
In the case of patent-to-product tying, the patent owner uses the market power
conferred by the patent to compel customers to purchase a product in a separate
04-1361 16
market that the customer might otherwise purchase from a competitor. United States v.
U.S. Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 400 (1948); Intâl Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U.S.
392, 395 (1947); Morton Salt Co. v. G.S. Suppiger Co., 314 U.S. 488, 493 (1942). The
patent owner is thus able to use the market power conferred by the patent to foreclose
competition in the market for the product.
By contrast, a package licensing agreement that includes both essential and
nonessential patents does not impose any requirement on the licensee. It does not bar
the licensee from using any alternative technology that may be offered by a competitor
of the licensor. Nor does it foreclose the competitor from licensing his alternative
technology; it merely puts the competitor in the same position he would be in if he were
competing with unpatented technology.
A package license is in effect a promise by the patentee not to sue his customer
for infringing any patents on whatever technology the customer employs in making
commercial use of the licensed patent. That surrender of rights might mean that the
customer will choose not to license the alternative technology offered by the patenteeâs
competition, but it does not compel the customer to use the patenteeâs technology. The
package license is thus not anticompetitive in the way that a compelled purchase of a
tied product would be.
Contrary to the Commissionâs characterization, the intervenors were not âforcedâ
to âtakeâ anything from Philips that they did not want, nor were they restricted from
obtaining licenses from other sources to produce the relevant technology. Philips
simply provided that for a fixed licensing fee, it would not sue any licensee for engaging
in any conduct covered by the entire group of patents in the package. By analogy, if
04-1361 17
Philips had decided to surrender its ânonessentialâ patents or had simply announced
that it did not intend to enforce them, there would have been no way for the
manufacturers to decline or reject Philipsâs decision. Yet the economic effect of the
package licensing arrangement for Philipsâs patents is not fundamentally different from
the effect that such decisions would have had on third parties seeking to compete with
the technology covered by those ânonessentialâ patents. Thus, we conclude that the
Commission erred when it characterized the package license agreements as a way of
forcing the intervenors to license technology that they did not want in order to obtain
patent rights that they did.3
The Commission stated that it would not have found the package licenses to
constitute improper tying if Philips had offered to license its patents on an individual
basis, as an alternative to licensing them in packages. The Commissionâs position,
however, must necessarily be based on an assumption that, if the patents were offered
on an individual basis, individual patents would be offered for a lower price than the
patent packages as a whole. If that assumption were not implicit in the Commissionâs
conclusion, the Commission would be saying in effect that it would be unlawful for
3
The effect of a nonexclusive license was different before the Supreme Court,
in Lear, Inc. v. Adkins, 395 U.S. 653 (1969), abolished the patent doctrine of licensee
estoppel. Before Lear, a nonexclusive license had a legal effect that made it more than
a mere covenant by the licensee not to sue. Acceptance of the license barred the
licensee from challenging the validity of the patent. Some of the early decisions
regarding patent-to-patent tying arrangements appear to have been based, at least in
part, on that feature of pre-Lear patent licenses. See, e.g., Am. Securit Co. v.
Shatterproof Glass Corp., 268 F.2d 769, 777 (3d Cir. 1959); Intâl Mfg. Co. v. Landon,
336 F.2d 723, 731 (9th Cir. 1964); see also Duplan Corp. v. Deering Milliken, Inc., 444
F. Supp. 648, 699 (D.S.C. 1977), affâd in pertinent part, 594 F.2d 979 (4th Cir. 1979). In
the post-Lear era, the âacceptanceâ of a license has no such restrictive effect on the
licenseeâs freedom.
04-1361 18
Philips to charge the same royalty for its essential patents that it charges for its patent
packages and to offer the nonessential patents for free. Yet that sort of pricing policy
plainly would not be unlawful. See Directory Sales Mgmt. Corp. v. Ohio Bell Tel. Co.,
833 F.2d 606, 609-10 (6th Cir. 1987).4
To the extent that the Commissionâs decision is based on an assumption that
individual licenses would necessarily be available for a lower price than package
licenses, that assumption is directly contrary to the evidence and even to the
administrative law judgeâs findings of fact. As noted above, the administrative law judge
found that the royalty rate under Philipsâs package licenses depended on the number of
discs the manufacturer produced under the authority of the license, not the number of
individual patents the manufacturer used to produce those discs. That is, the royalty
rate did not vary depending on whether the licensees used only the essential patents or
used all of the patents in the package. Thus, it seems evident that if Philips were forced
to offer licenses on an individual basis, it would continue to charge the same per unit
royalty regardless of the number of patents the manufacturer chose to license. That
alteration in Philipsâs practice would have absolutely no effect on the would-be
competitors who wished to offer alternatives to the technology represented by Philipsâs
4
Of course, in a tying case if the evidence shows that the price of a bundled
product reflects any of the cost of the tied product, âcustomers are purchasing the tied
product, even if it is touted as being free.â Multistate Legal Studies, Inc. v. Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich Legal & Profâl Publâns, Inc., 63 F.3d 1540, 1548 (10th Cir. 1995),
citing 3 Phillip E. Areeda & Donald F. Turner, Antitrust Law Âś 733a (1978) (tying may
exist âwhen a machine is sold or leased at a price that covers âfreeâ servicingâ); see also
United States v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d 34, 68 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (âthe antitrust laws do
not condemn even a monopolist for offering its product at an attractive price, and we
therefore have no warrant to condemn Microsoft for offering either IE or the IEAK free of
chargeâ). The evidence in this case, however, does not indicate that there is a hidden
charge for the so-called nonessential patents in the Philips patent packages.
04-1361 19
so-called nonessential patents, since those patents would effectively be offered for free,
and the competitors would therefore still have to face exactly the same barriersâthe
availability of a free alternative to the technology that they were trying to license for a
fee.
More generally, the Commissionâs assumption that a license to fewer than all the
patents in a package would presumably carry a lower fee than the package itself
ignores the reality that the value of any patent package is largely, if not entirely, based
on the patents that are essential to the technology in question. A patent that is
nonessential because it covers technology that can be fully replaced by alternative
technology that is available for free is essentially valueless. A patent that is
nonessential because it covers technology that can be fully replaced by alternative
technology that is available through a license from another patent owner has value, but
its value is limited by the price of the alternative technology. Short of imposing an
obligation on the licensor to make some sort of allocation of fees across a group of
licenses, there is no basis for the Commission to conclude that a smaller group of the
licensesâthe so-called âessentialâ licensesâwould have been available for a lower fee
if they had not been âtied toâ the so-called nonessential patents.
It is entirely rational for a patentee who has a patent that is essential to particular
technology, as well as other patents that are not essential, to charge what the market
will bear for the essential patent and to offer the others for free. Because a license to
the essential patent is, by definition, a prerequisite to practice the technology in
question, the patentee can charge whatever maximum amount a willing licensee is able
to pay to practice the technology in question. If the patentee allocates royalty fees
04-1361 20
between its essential and nonessential patents, it runs the risk that licensees will take a
license to the essential patent but not to the nonessential patents. The effect of that
choice will be that the patentee will not be able to obtain the full royalty value of the
essential patent. For the patentee in this situation to offer its nonessential patents as
part of a package with the essential patent at no additional charge is no more
anticompetitive than if it had surrendered the nonessential patents or had simply
announced a policy that it would not enforce them against persons who licensed the
essential patent. In either case, those offering technology that competed with the
nonessential patents would be unhappy, because they would be competing against free
technology. But the patentee would not be using his essential patent to obtain power in
the market for the technology covered by the nonessential patents. This package
licensing arrangement cannot fairly be characterized as an exploitation of power in one
market to obtain a competitive advantage in another.5
Aside from the absence of evidence that the package licensing arrangements in
this case had the effect of impermissibly broadening the scope of the âessentialâ patents
with anticompetitive effect, Philips argues that the Commission failed to acknowledge
the unique procompetitive benefits associated with package licensing. Philips points to
5
The implication of the Commissionâs decision is that a party with both an
essential patent and a nonessential patent is not allowed to package the two together
and only offer the package for a single price. That would have the perverse effect of
potentially putting a party owning both an essential patent and a nonessential but
related patent in a worse position than a party owning only the essential patent. The
party owning only the essential patent would be free to charge any licensing fee up to
the maximum that a manufacturer would be willing to pay to practice the patented
technology, while a party owning both the essential patent and a nonessential patent
would be barred from extracting that maximum licensing fee for its essential patent and
assuring the manufacturer that it would not be subject to suit on the nonessential patent.
04-1361 21
the federal governmentâs guidelines for licensing intellectual property, which recognize
that patent packages âmay provide procompetitive benefits by integrating
complementary technologies, reducing transaction costs, clearing blocking positions,
and avoiding costly infringement litigation. By promoting the dissemination of
technology, cross-licensing and pooling arrangements are often procompetitive.â U.S.
Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, Antitrust Guidelines for the
Licensing of Intellectual Property § 5.5 (1995); see also Herbert Hovenkamp, IP and
Antitrust § 34.2c, at 34-7 (2004).
Philips introduced evidence that package licensing reduces transaction costs by
eliminating the need for multiple contracts and reducing licensorsâ administrative and
monitoring costs. See Tex. Instruments, Inc. v. Hyundai Elecs., 49 F. Supp. 2d 893,
901 (E.D. Tex. 1999) (describing how âextremely expensive and time-consumingâ it is
for parties to license and manage the licensing of technology by using individual patents
and how it is preferable to employ a patent portfolio). Package licensing can also
obviate any potential patent disputes between a licensor and a licensee and thus
reduce the likelihood that a licensee will find itself involved in costly litigation over
unlicensed patents with potentially adverse consequences for both parties, such as a
finding that the licensee infringed the unlicensed patents or that the unlicensed patents
were invalid. See Steven C. Carlson, Patent Pools and the Antitrust Dilemma, 16 Yale
J. on Reg. 359, 379-81 (1999). Thus, package licensing provides the parties a way of
ensuring that a single licensing fee will cover all the patents needed to practice a
particular technology and protecting against the unpleasant surprise for a licensee who
learns, after making a substantial investment, that he needed a license to more patents
04-1361 22
than he originally obtained. Finally, grouping licenses in a package allows the parties to
price the package based on their estimate of what it is worth to practice a particular
technology, which is typically much easier to calculate than determining the marginal
benefit provided by a license to each individual patent. In short, package licensing has
the procompetitive effect of reducing the degree of uncertainty associated with
investment decisions.
The package licenses in this case have some of the same advantages as the
package licenses at issue in the Broadcast Music case. The Supreme Court
determined in that case that the blanket copyright package licenses at issue had useful,
procompetitive purposes because they gave the licensees âunplanned, rapid, and
indemnified access to any and all of the repertory of [musical] compositions, and [they
gave the owners] a reliable method of collecting for the use of the their copyrights.â 441
U.S. at 20. While â[i]ndividual sales transactions [would be] quite expensive, as would
be individual monitoring and enforcement,â a package licensing agreement would
ensure access and save costs. Id. Hence, the Supreme Court determined that such
conduct should fall under âa more discriminating examination under the rule of reason.â
Id. at 24.
In light of the efficiencies of package patent licensing and the important
differences between product-to-patent tying arrangements and arrangements involving
group licensing of patents, we reject the Commissionâs conclusion that Philipsâs conduct
shows a âlack of any redeeming virtueâ and should be âconclusively presumed to be
unreasonable and therefore illegal without elaborate inquiry as to the precise harm they
have caused or the business excuse for their use.â N. Pac. Ry. Co. v. United States,
04-1361 23
356 U.S. 1, 5 (1958). We therefore hold that the analysis that led the Commission to
apply the rule of per se illegality to Philipsâs package licensing agreements was legally
flawed.6
B
In the alternative, Philips argues that the Commissionâs finding of per se patent
misuse was not justified by the facts of this case. In particular, Philips contends that the
evidence did not show that there were commercially viable alternatives to the
technology covered by the so-called ânonessentialâ patents in the Philips licensing
packages that any of its licensees would have preferred to use.
In order to show that a tying arrangement is per se unlawful, a complaining party
must demonstrate that it links two separate products and has an anticompetitive effect
in the market for the second product. The Supreme Court explained that the âessential
characteristicâ of an invalid tying arrangement
lies in the sellerâs exploitation of its control over the tying product to force
the buyer in to the purchase of a tied product that the buyer either did not
want at all, or might have preferred to purchase elsewhere on different
terms. When such âforcingâ is present, competition on the merits in the
market for the tied item is restrained . . . .
Jefferson Parish, 466 U.S. at 12; id. at 20-21 (â[A] tying arrangement cannot exist
unless two separate markets have been linked.â); B. Braun Med., Inc. v. Abbott Labs.,
6
The Supreme Court recently granted certiorari in Independent Ink, Inc. v.
Illinois Tool Works, Inc., 396 F.3d 1342 (Fed. Cir.), cert granted, 125 S. Ct. 2937 (2005),
a case involving a tying arrangement involving a patent and an unpatented product. It is
possible that the Supreme Courtâs decision in that case will offer some guidance with
respect to the patent misuse issue presented by this case, but because the
circumstances of the two cases are quite different, we have determined that the proper
course is to resolve this appeal without waiting for the Supreme Courtâs decision in
Independent Ink.
04-1361 24
124 F.3d 1419, 1426 (Fed. Cir. 1997) (impermissible tying in the context of patent
misuse if patentee uses a patent âwhich enjoys market power in the relevant market . . .
to restrain competition in an unpatented productâ). The Commission found that the
ânonessentialâ patents, i.e., the Farla, Iwasaki, Yamamoto, and Lokhoff patents,
constituted separate products from the âessentialâ patents in the package and that the
package licensing agreements adversely affected competition in the market for the
nonessential technology.7 The Commissionâs analysis of that factual issue was flawed,
however.
Patents within a patent package can be regarded as ânonessentialâ only if there
are âcommercially feasibleâ alternatives to those patents. See Intâl Mfg. Co. v. Landon,
336 F.2d 723, 729 (9th Cir. 1964). If there are no commercially practicable alternatives
to the allegedly nonessential patents, packaging those patents together with so-called
essential patents can have no anticompetitive effect in the marketplace, because no
competition for a viable alternative product is foreclosed. In such a case, the only effect
of finding per se patent misuse is to give licensees a way of avoiding their obligations
under the licensing agreements, with no corresponding benefit to competition in any
real-world market.
The Department of Justice has recognized that the availability of commercially
viable alternative technology is relevant to the analysis of package licensing
7
The intervenors note that âthere existed a number of commercially-
available CD-R discs utilizing alternative technology that did not infringe these
supposedly essential patents.â For support, intervenors cite the opinion of the
administrative law judge, who determined that two patents held by Taiyo Yuden were
not essential. Because the Commission did not address those patents, however, they
are not relevant to this appeal.
04-1361 25
agreements. In particular, the Department has stated that patent packages do not have
the undesirable effects of tying if they include patents to technology for which there is no
practical or realistic alternative. See, e.g., Business Review Letter, U.S. Department of
Justice, Antitrust Division (Dec. 16, 1998). That principle is consistent with the main
purpose of the separate-products inquiry in tying cases generally, which is to ensure
that conduct is not condemned as anticompetitive âunless there is sufficient demand for
the purchase of [the tied product] separate from the [tying product] to identify a distinct
product market in which it is efficient to offer [the tied product].â Jefferson Parish, 466
U.S. at 21-22; see Mallinckrodt, 976 F.2d at 704 (tying is misuse only when the
patentee uses its patent to obtain âmarket benefitâ beyond that conferred by the patent).
In this case, the evidence did not show that there were commercially viable
substitutes for the Farla, Iwasaki, Yamamoto, and Lokhoff patents that disc
manufacturers wished to use in making compact discs compliant with the Orange Book
standards. There was thus insufficient evidence that including the four ânonessentialâ
patents in the Philips patent packages had an actual anticompetitive effect. That is, the
evidence did not show that there were commercially viable substitutes for those four
ânonessentialâ patents that disc manufacturers wished to use in making compact discs
compliant with the Orange Book standards.
Two of those four patents, the Farla and Iwasaki patents, cover a method of
controlling the recording of information onto compact discs, i.e., a âwrite strategy,â
including an âoptimum power control procedure.â8 The Commission found that another
8
In its amicus curiae brief, the New York Intellectual Property Association
notes that, unlike the other three allegedly nonessential patents, the Iwasaki patent
04-1361 26
company, Calimetrics, Inc., had developed a commercially viable, alternative method of
performing the write strategy and the optimum power control procedure that is not
covered by the Farla and Iwasaki patents. In making that finding, the Commission
relied solely on the testimony of Dr. Stephen McLaughlin, Calimetricsâs principal
scientist, who had helped to create the technology in question. Dr. McLaughlin testified
that Calimetrics had created a general write strategy; that âin the development of [that]
technology [Calimetrics] determined that this write strategy was applicable to CD-R and
CD-RW systemsâ; and that the company has âspent an enormous amount of effort
promoting [its] idea . . . .â While that testimony was sufficient to support the
Commissionâs finding that there was an alternative technology to the Farla and Iwasaki
patents, it did not show that the Calimetrics technology was an alternative that Philipsâs
licensees wished to use in place of the technology covered by the Farla and Iwasaki
patents. The Commission did not point to any evidence that any licensee or potential
licensee asked to have any of the four ânonessentialâ patents removed from the
package license and that Philips refused to do so. Although, as noted, GigaStorage
asked about obtaining a license to only certain patents, in the hope that by eliminating
some patents the royalty rate would be lower, the evidence did not show that
would expire after all of the undisputedly essential patents. As a result, the presence of
the Iwasaki patent in a patent licensing package could have the effect of extending the
obligation to pay royalties beyond the expiration date of the âessentialâ patents. A
provision requiring that royalties be paid beyond the life of a patent has been held to be
unenforceable. See Brulotte v. Thys Co., 379 U.S. 29, 30 (1964). However, because
neither the Commission nor the administrative law judge addressed the impact of that
potential temporal extension of the royalty obligation, and none of the parties addressed
that issue on appeal in their briefs, we do not address the issue here.
04-1361 27
GigaStorageâs request related to the four ânonessentialâ patents or that GigaStorage
had any interest in licensing Calimetricsâs technology.
Dr. McLaughlin testified, regarding a hypothetical situation, that â[w]hen we go
and try to license this technology, the companies say we have technology that performs
a function of this type, and . . . I presume they would be referring to [the nonessential
CD-R/CD-RW] patents.â That testimony, however, falls short of showing that any of
Philipsâs licensees were forced by the package license agreements to license the Farla
and Iwasaki patents when they would have preferred to use Calimetricsâs technology.
Dr. McLaughlin did not testify as to even a single specific instance on which a disc
manufacturer expressed a preference for the Calimetrics technology but was dissuaded
from licensing it by Philipsâs insistence on licensing the Farla and Iwasaki patents as
part of its package license arrangements. The evidence thus did not show that there
was a demand for the Calimetrics technology that went unmet because of the coercive
effect of Philipsâs inclusion of the Farla and Iwasaki patents in its package licensing
agreements.
As for the Yamamoto patent, which covers a method of creating master discs by
using one laser beam, the Commission again relied on the testimony of Dr. McLaughlin.
The Commission found that Calimetrics had developed a commercially viable alternative
method of creating master discs by using two laser beams. Dr. McLaughlinâs testimony,
however, does not support the Commissionâs finding. Dr. McLaughlin stated that it was
âfairly easy to conceive of alternative methods for implementing the functionality of the
intention of . . . what [the Yamamoto] patent is directed towardsâ and that it would
âcertainly [be] possible to do this using two beams . . . .â Yet the mere possibility that
04-1361 28
alternative technology might at some point become available is not sufficient to support
a finding that at the time the Philips licenses were executed, there was actually a
commercially available alternative to the technology claimed in the Yamamoto patent.
Finally, the Commission found that the Lokhoff patent was not âtechnically
essentialâ to manufacturing discs compliant with the Orange Book standard. The
Lokhoff patent covers a system for providing copy protection by placing a âcopy bitâ into
a compact disc for the purpose of determining the type of information that may be
received for recording. The Commission found that an alternative exists to the Lokhoff
patent. In so doing, the Commission again relied on testimony by Dr. McLaughlin, who
stated that copy protection could be achieved by âembedding copy protection and user
data,â instead of by using a copy bit. Dr. McLaughlinâs testimony, however, does not
establish that the alternative technology was commercially available to be substituted
for the technology of the Lokhoff patent. He stated that the alternative embedding
method was a âvery wide area of research. Thereâs a lot of activity going on these days
in using this general approach . . . .â That testimony indicates research interest in a
possible approach to solving the problem of embedding, but it does not establish the
existence of an available, commercially practicable alternative to Philipsâs technology.
Beyond the absence of factual support for the Commissionâs findings, the
Commissionâs analysis of the four ânonessentialâ patents demonstrates a more
fundamental problem with applying the per se rule of illegality to patent packages such
as the ones at issue in this case. If a patentholder has a package of patents, all of
which are necessary to enable a licensee to practice particular technology, it is well
established that the patentee may lawfully insist on licensing the patents as a package
04-1361 29
and may refuse to license them individually, since the group of patents could not
reasonably be viewed as distinct products. See Landon, 336 F.2d at 729. Yet over
time, the development of alternative technology may raise questions whether some of
the patents in the package are essential or whether, as in this case, there are
alternatives available for the technology covered by some of the patents. Indeed, in a
fast-developing field such as the one at issue in this case, it seems quite likely that
questions will arise over time, such as what constitutes an âessentialâ patent for
purposes of manufacturing compact discs compliant with the Orange Book standard.
Roger B. Andewelt, Analyzing Patent Pools Under the Antitrust Laws, 53 Antitrust L.J.
611, 616 (1985) (âthe line between competitive patents and blocking or complementary
patents is frequently very difficult to drawâ). Under the Commissionâs approach, an
agreement that was perfectly lawful when executed could be challenged as per se
patent misuse due to developments in the technology of which the patentees are
unaware, or which have just become commercially viable. Such a rule would make
patents subject to being declared unenforceable due to developments that occurred
after execution of the license or were unknown to the parties at the time of licensing.
Not only would such a rule render licenses subject to invalidation on grounds unknown
at the time of licensing, but it would also provide a strong incentive to litigation by any
licensee, since the reward for showing that even a single license in a package was
ânonessentialâ would be to render all the patents in the package unenforceable. For
that reason as well, we reject the Commissionâs ruling that package agreements of the
sort entered into by Philips and the intervenors must be invalidated on the ground that
they constitute per se patent misuse.
04-1361 30
III
In the alternative, the Commission held that Philipsâs package licensing
agreements constituted patent misuse under the rule of reason. The Commissionâs
analysis under the rule of reason largely tracked the analysis that led it to conclude that
the package licensing agreements constituted per se patent misuse.
As in the case of its ruling on per se patent misuse, the fulcrum of the
Commissionâs conclusion that Philips was guilty of patent misuse under the rule of
reason was its conclusion that the package licenses at issue in this case had âthe
anticompetitive effect of foreclosing competition in the alternative technology that
competes with the technology covered by a nonessential patent that was included as a
so-called âessentialâ patent.â On that issue, the Commission adopted the administrative
law judgeâs analysis and conclusions with respect to the Farla, Iwasaki, Yamamoto, and
Lokhoff patents, but it took no position with respect to other patents that the
administrative law judge found to be nonessential.
Focusing particularly on the Farla and Iwasaki patents, the Commission found
that those patents were not essential to manufacturing CD-Rs and CD-RWs compliant
with the Orange Book standards and that including those patents in the patent
packages foreclosed competition by Calimetrics. The Commission briefly addressed
the assertedly procompetitive effects of the package licensing arrangements but upheld
the administrative law judgeâs conclusion that those arrangements had a net
anticompetitive effect because âthe convenience to manufacturers of a broad package
of patents was outweighed by the anticompetitive effect on alternative technologies of
packaging nonessential patents with essential patents.â
04-1361 31
Under the rule of reason, the finder of fact must determine if the practice at issue
is âreasonably within the patent grant, i.e., that it relates to subject matter within the
scope of the patent claims.â Va. Panel, 133 F.3d at 869, quoting Mallinckrodt, 976 F.2d
at 708. If the practice does not âbroaden the scope of the patent, either in terms of
covered subject matter or temporally,â then the patentee is not chargeable with patent
misuse. Va. Panel, 133 F.3d at 869. More specifically, âthe finder of fact must decide
whether the questioned practice imposes an unreasonable restraint on competition,
taking into account a variety of factors, including specific information about the relevant
business, its condition before and after the restraint was imposed, and the restraintâs
history, nature and effect.â Va. Panel, 133 F.3d at 869, quoting State Oil Co. v. Khan,
522 U.S. 3, 10 (1997); see also Monsanto Co., 363 F.3d at 1341.
The Commissionâs rule of reason analysis is flawed for two reasons. Most
importantly, its conclusion was largely predicated on the anticompetitive effect on
competitors offering alternatives to the four so-called nonessential patents in the Philips
patent packages. Yet, as we have already held, the evidence did not show that
including those patents in the patent packages had a negative effect on commercially
available technology. The Commission assumed that there was a foreclosure of
competition because compact disc manufacturers would be induced to accept licenses
to the technology covered by the Farla and Iwasaki patents and therefore would be
unwilling to consider alternatives. As noted, however, there was no evidence before the
Commission that any manufacturer had actually refused to consider alternatives to the
technology covered by those patents or for that matter that any commercially viable
alternative actually existed.
04-1361 32
In addition, as in its per se analysis, the Commission did not acknowledge the
problems with licensing patents individually, such as the transaction costs associated
with making individual patent-by-patent royalty determinations and monitoring possible
infringement of patents that particular licensees chose not to license. The Commission
also did not address the problem, noted above, that changes in the technology for
manufacturing compact discs could render some patents that were indisputably
essential at the time of licensing arguably nonessential at some later point in the life of
the license. To hold that a licensing agreement that satisfied the rule of reason when
executed became unreasonable at some later point because of technological
development would introduce substantial uncertainty into the market and displace
settled commercial arrangements in favor of uncertainty that could only be resolved
through expensive litigation.
Finally, the Commission failed to consider the efficiencies that package licensing
may produce because of the innovative character of the technology at hand. Given
that the technology surrounding the Orange Book standard was still evolving, there
were many uncertainties regarding what patents might be needed to produce the
compact discs. As noted, package license agreements in which the royalty was based
on the number of units produced, not the number of patents used to produce them, can
resolve in advance all potential patent disputes between the licensor and the licensee,
whereas licensing patent rights on a patent-by-patent basis can result in continuing
disputes over whether the licenseeâs technology infringes certain ancillary patents
owned by the licensor that are not part of the group elected by the licensee.
04-1361 33
We therefore conclude that the line of analysis that the Commission employed in
reaching its conclusion that Philipsâs package licensing agreements are more
anticompetitive than procompetitive, and thus are unlawful under the rule of reason, was
predicated on legal errors and on factual findings that were not supported by substantial
evidence. For these reasons, we cannot uphold the Commissionâs decision that
Philipsâs patents are unenforceable because of patent misuse under the rule of reason.
Because the Commission did not address all of the issues presented by the
administrative law judgeâs decision under both the per se and rule of reason analysis,
further proceedings before the Commission may be necessary with respect to whether
Philipsâs patents are enforceable and, if so, whether Philips is entitled to any relief from
the Commission. Accordingly, we reverse the Commissionâs ruling on patent misuse for
the reasons stated, and we remand this case to the Commission for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
04-1361 34