ETSI Headquarters, Sophia Antipolis, France - 13 December 2013
The ETSI Special Committee on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR SC) met in Frankfurt in Germany from 10 to 12 December 2013. This last meeting of 2013 was attended by ETSI’s partner the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), representatives of the European Commission's (EC) Directorates General Competition, Enterprise and Industry, Internal Market and Services as well as Communications Networks, Content and Technology, the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States, as well as a large number of ETSI members.
The ETSI IPR SC continued to focus its work on the topic of injunctive relief. The EC and the US DoJ contributed their views to the meeting. Some new high level contributions were tabled and appeared to promise a wider consensus. At this stage it is too early to anticipate the outcome of the discussions but it was agreed to continue to explore these new contributions in a collaborative manner between those companies having diverse viewpoints, ahead of the next meeting planned for 18 to 20 February 2014.
Other topics, in particular debate on definitions of FRAND and Reciprocity were only shortly discussed, as priority was given to move forward on the use of injunctive relief.
The ETSI secretariat also gave a report on the availability of an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) model submission agreement from WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) to which the secretariat and some ETSI members have contributed by extensive exchanges on the elaboration of standards and related issues.