LES Creates FRAND Licensing Standard Committee

Published in IPPro Patents, Oct. 2018

The Licensing Executives Society (LES) has created a new fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing standard committee.

According to LES, the committee will focus on the creation of an industry-wide, consensus-based business process standard that gives all parties a clear understanding of their responsibilities in the FRAND standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing process.

Members of the committee include ACT | The App Association, Ericsson, and Unified Patents.

Matteo Sabattini, director of IP policy at Ericsson, and Brian Scarpelli, senior global policy counsel at ACT, will be co-chairs of the committee.

LES launched the committee via the ANSI-accredited LES Standards programme, in an effort to bring together industry experts and LES Standards programme members who act as principals or agents in SEP licensing on FRAND terms.

LES said that by collaborating on best practices to provide this clarity, the standard will “reduce the cost and the management time to licence SEPs.

Bob Held, chair-elect and president-elect of LES of LES, commented: “The developers and implementers of technical standards will benefit from a flexible and yet standardised framework for licensing SEPs on FRAND terms.”

“We have therefore established a committee in LES Standards to spell out and enhance efficient industry best practices for this important area of the innovation ecosystem.”

Bill Elkington, current chair and president of LES, added: “Matteo Sabattini and Brian Scarpelli are ideal chairs of this committee because they represent stakeholders from throughout the innovation ecosystem.”

“As an ANSI-accredited standard developer in the field of intellectual capital management, and with Sabattini and Scarpelli’s leadership, LES is well-positioned to develop consensus guidance on FRAND licensing practices.”

Interested parties can visit the LES Standards committee website to join.