Contreras on IP Pools
Jorge L. Contreras (University of Utah - S.J. Quinney College of Law) has posted Intellectual Property Pools and Aggregation (Jorge L. Contreras, Intellectual Property Licensing and Transactions: Theory and Practice, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This chapter in the forthcoming case book Intellectual Property Licensing and Transactions: Theory and Practice covers IP pooling, with an emphasis on patents. It begins with a discussion of the theoretical benefit of pooling, including efficiency gains and the avoidance of blocking positions, thickets and anti-commons. It then addresses antitrust analysis of pooling transactions from Standard Oil (Indiana) v. United States (U.S. 1931) through the 2017 DOJ-FTC Antitrust Guidelines. The chapter then turns to pools created to facilitate standard-setting, including the MPEG-2 and 3GPP Pools, and discusses the concept of complementarity and essentiality of pooled assets. It concludes with brief discussi