Antitrust Limits on Targeted Patent Aggregation

Florida Law Review Volume 67 | Issue 2 Article 24 January 2016 Antitrust Limits on Targeted Patent Aggregation Alan Devlin Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr Part of the Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons, and the Intellectual Property Law Commons Recommended Citation Alan Devlin, Antitrust Limits on Targeted Patent Aggregation, 67 Fla. L. Rev. 775 (2016). Available at: http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr/vol67/iss2/24 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UF Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Florida Law Review by an authorized administrator of UF Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact . Devlin: Antitrust Limits on Targeted Patent Aggregation ANTITRUST LIMITS ON TARGETED PATENT AGGREGATION Alan Devlin∗ Abstract Patent-assertion entities (PAEs) are non-technology-practicing companies that aggregate and license patents under threat of suit. Their activities have drawn fire, including presidential condemnation, and spurred proposed legislation to protect operating firms against them. PAEs leverage flaws in the patent system to extort firms that independently invent and sell technological goods to consumers. Since PAEs tax innovators and appear to restrict rather than facilitate wealth transfer to original patentees, their worst rent-seeking practices almost certainly reduce net incentives to innovate and harm consumers. This result is more likely if the principal desirable incentive that PAEs create is to file patents rather than to commercialize technology. The idiosyncratic nature of today’s patent system facilitates PAE activity. Patents’ numerosity, vague scope, widespread invalidity, and sometimes-functional claiming prevent even the most assiduous technology companies from securing guaranteed clearing positions before building products. These conditions ensure that a universe of potentially infringed patents of dubious validity exists in many industries ex post, especially in information technology. Fortunately, atomized ownership of intellectual property limits enforcement ex post because the unlikelihood of success in asserting few patents, the risk of countersuit, and high litigation costs make suing a negative value proposition. The result is a public-goods benefit in constrained enforcement that ameliorates hold-up potential. Even ex post, owners of disaggregated patents typically lack market power unless their intellectual property rights are both likely valid and infringed. PAE accumulation changes all of that. By amassing hundreds or even thousands of patents, never building or selling goods, using shell companies to conceal the contents of their portfolios, and asserting patents in waves ex post, PAEs can realize immense hold-up power that atomized owners lack. This conclusion holds true even if the great majority of their patents are invalid or not infringed. Thus, many operating victims are vulnerable to threats of incessant litigation and are forced to pay tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars for licenses that are unnecessary to engineer successful products. Commentators ∗ Associate, Latham & Watkins LLP; Adjunct Professor, U.C. Hastings College of Law. BBLS (Int’l), University College Dublin, 2004; LL.M., University of Chicago, 2005; J.S.D., University of Chicago, 2006; J.D., Stanford Law School, 2007. The opinions expressed in this Article are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Latham & Watkins LLP or its clients. The author is indebted to participants in the University of San Diego’s IP Speaker series for their valuable comments, and to Professor Ted Sichelman in particular. 775 Published by UF Law Scholarship Repository, 2016 1 Florida Law Review, Vol. 67, Iss. 2 [2016], Art. 24 776 FLORIDA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 67 increasingly—though not universally—accept that PAEs harm the economy. The solution, however, is less clear. Many propose reforming the patent system, such as by requiring losing patentees to pay the other side’s costs and forcing PAEs to disclose their portfolios. Some legislative reforms appear likely, and in 2014 the Supreme Court considered whether to invalidate certain computer-implemented inventions. Nevertheless, modest changes are unlikely to provide a significant remedy for PAE hold-up. Lacking other means, some policy makers now look to antitrust law for solutions. Not everyone believes that competition rules proscribe PAE conduct or otherwise suitably constrain patent hold-up. Indeed, antitrust rules are not a cure-all. This Article argues, however, that antitrust law can viably limit certain abuses of the patent system by PAEs. Section 2 of the Sherman Act proscribes monopolization and Section 7 of the Clayton Act prohibits asset acquisitions that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly. These provisions have sufficient teeth theoretically to catch the most egregious forms of hold-up founded on ex post patent aggregation and assertion. This Article explains how PAE activity can reduce social welfare and how PAEs’ targeted patent aggregation and assertion may violate competition rules. INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................777 I. PAES AND THE ECONOMICS OF PATENT LICENSING ................784 A. The Rise and Possible Fall of the “Patent Troll” ................................................................785 B. The Optimal Rate of Patent Assertion and Independent Innovation ..................................................792 C. The Competitive Ex Ante Pricing of Proprietary Technology and Ex Post Hold-Up ..................................799 II. PATENT AGGREGATION UNDER VARIOUS CONDITIONS OF OPTIMALITY: AN EXPLANATORY MODEL ...............................801 A. Perfect Aggregation and Zero Enforcement Costs: The Royalty-Stacking Problem........................................803 B. Introducing Modest Transaction and Litigation Costs ...............................................................807 1. Patent Atomization and the Undercompensation Problem ....................................807 2. Positive Litigation Costs and the Question of Patentee Overcompensation .................................809 3. Disaggregation and Wasteful Bargaining Costs .......................................................809 http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr/vol67/iss2/24 2 Devlin: Antitrust Limits on Targeted Patent Aggregation 2015] ANTITRUST LIMITS ON TARGETED PATENT AGGREGATION 777 C. Real-Life Complications: Judicial Propensity to Err and High Litigation Costs ........................................810 1. Background Conditions Necessary to Understand the Effects of Aggregation.....................811 2. Efficient Aggregation: Tier A Patents ......................813 a. The Problematics of Hold-Up and Disaggregation .............................................813 b. Desirabl (...truncated)