Last month, Unified Patents, also known as a PTAB reverse troll, launched its new service called Unified Consulting.

There is no doubt that the number of patents declared as potentially essential to technical standards is not an indication of essentiality; its only purpose is to make those declared patents accessible on FRAND terms should they ever become essential.

The remedies a court can impose on behalf of a standard-essential patent owner whose Essential Patents are infringed, and even the remedies an Essential Patents owner requests became an especially contentious question between 2013-2015.

As I noted previously, over the past five years or so, the IEEE has been captured by the implementer lobby and its advocates.

While most are unlikely to be familiar with the standards development organization IEEE-SA, everyone is familiar with its flagship standard IEEE 802.11, more commonly referred to by its brand name Wi-Fi, that is utilized by billions of people daily.

If you follow statements of antitrust agencies the world over – even as far away as China and Korea

Well it finally happened. Notwithstanding the settlement with Apple, the district court overseeing the FTC’s case against Qualcomm issued a blistering, 233 page opinion against Qualcomm’s SEP licensing practices.

After a period of skeptical acquiescence, anti-trust regulators seem to have come around and embraced patent pools for standard essential patents (SEPs.) The European Commission, no slouch when it comes to regulating SEPs, even remarked that the creation of patent pools “should be encouraged.”

In the topsy-turvy world of Standard Essential Patent (SEP) litigation, a court acknowledging the obvious often counts as news.

This past April, I participated in a 7-person panel at the Fordham IP Institute comprised of lawyers with significant interest in the telecommunications industry.