FOSS Patents Wednesday, April 21, 2021 That conclusion didn't surprise me. The ETSI agreement must be interpreted under French law, and at my Brussels conference on component-level SEP licensing in November 2019, French law professor Philippe Stoffel-Munck took the same position. What made the judge's position today particularly noteworthy is that he previously criticized the ETSI FRAND pledge for containing only about half the clarity that he'd like to see in it. He provide one example of such a shortcoming: the pledge doesn't specify in what forum any disputes over licensing terms should be resolved. While some major cellular SEP holders--such as InterDigital, whose licensing chief Eeva Hakoranta also spoke today--argue that licensing at the end-product level is the standard in their industry, two industry representatives at today's webinar--though it's important to note they all expressed only their personal opinions--explained why component-level licensing is key to the ability of standardization to serve its purpose. Intel's IP policy chief Dr. Rebekka Porath mentioned that Intel, a member of approximately 300 standard-setting organizations, does grant SEP licenses at the component level. Last summer, a component-level SEP license deal between Huawei and Sharp became known (neither Huawei nor Sharp spoke today). Automotive supplier Continental's IP chief Dr. Roman Bonn explained the supply chain for connected cars, where cellular standards are implemented in the baseband chipset. What corroborates this view is what WilmerHale's patent and antitrust attorney Tim Syrett explained: he's litigated various SEP cases in the U.S. involving SEPs, and the infringement analysis always focused on the source code of the baseband chip. (This is a structural difference between SEP litigation in the U.S. and Germany; in the latter country, infringement allegations are typically based on the specification of a standard, not on what the accused products