Recently, I was reading a piece published by FOSS Patents. The article is titled – “Disclaimers, excuses, evasive answers: EU SEP Regulation lacks evidentiary basis, Brussels event primarily about GROWing IPlytics’ business”

While the title itself must have given you the gist of the author’s feelings about the proposed SEP regulation, I’ll share the crux of a couple of arguments discussed in the article- 

1. There has been significant debate and concerns about the empirical studies used to support the European Commission’s proposed regulation on Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) 
2. There are questions regarding potential hidden business interests, incompetence, and rushed decision-making associated with these studies and the resulting regulation.
3. The article argues that the proposal diminishes the commercial value of individual patents without due process and criticizes the lack of appeal mechanisms. 

The points raised in the article got me thinking about the assessment of SEPs and so I discussed it with two SEP experts in my team. I asked Vikas and Muzzamil what they thought about the proposed regulations and here’s what they had to say- 

Vikas Jha
(Assistant Vice President GreyB)

One key takeaway from the aftermath of these documents is the need for a system or group that can effectively confirm whether a patent is an SEP or not, without solely relying on statistical approaches. 

This confirmation process should involve input from industry players, experts, and stakeholders who have access to the same data. Regulations should be based on independent verification and technical expertise, ensuring a fair evaluation of patents.

Muzammil Hassan
(Head of IP Monetization group GreyB)

An important piece to take into account while proposing regulations on SEPs is to understand the damage sample size analysis can create.

If billions of dollars are at stake and on top of it all the contributing companies are claiming to have gained a top spot in SEP declarations, then it is necessary that either a sample size of thousands of patents is chosen (not recommending though) or every single declared patent family is checked for essentiality under a transparent setting.
As the world goes towards better connectivity, SEP regulations are going to be an issue and the Govt. organizations should play a role to bring better transparency and integrity into the essentiality confirmation system.

What do you think about the EU SEP Regulations? Do you agree with the proposed regulations?