21 January, Los Angeles, California, USA
Opening Address
Ladies and gentlemen good morning and welcome to the first meeting of the IPR-AHG in 2014, and the first meeting ever to be held outside Geneva.
So firstly I would like to thank Qualcomm and Broadcom for hosting this event in the dynamic State of California, and in this beautiful venue in Orange County.
It is only fair that after the accelerated schedule of meetings last year, where we had a large percentage of participants from this part of the world, that we should share the burden a bit and have a meeting here.
It was a difficult series of meetings last year but I believe the group did make some progress. Lets hope 2014 will be a good year and we can quickly move the discussion forward on the basis of all the work last year. So I hope the Californian sun will shed some light on our discussions!
The meaning of ‘reasonable’ in RAND has been highlighted by regulators and others as being of great importance. The need to clarify the meaning of ‘reasonable’ in the RAND context was one of the main drivers for the initiation of the round of accelerated meetings. It did not get a lot of attention last year as most of the time was spent on injunctions, so I hope this meeting will allow you to spend more time on this issue. You recall that it is something that the European Commission requested a concrete outcome within a reasonable period of time. I hope we do not need to define what would be a reasonable period of time!
Beside the meaning of ‘reasonable’, this meeting will address the issue of non-discrimination, as it relates to RAND-encumbered SEPs.
My aim is to present some recommendations to TSAG in June for improvements in either the Policy and/or the Guidelines, and the forms, on these issues as well as that of injunctions.
And before we close this meeting, we will consider a schedule for future meetings to reach this objective, pending on the progress we make this week.
As always I would like express my sincere appreciation to our moderators who have been invaluable in steering this work with neutrality and their expert knowledge and advice: Amy Morasco, Microsoft; Hung Ling, Alcatel-Lucent; and Serge Raes, Orange, who as usual will chair this meeting.
So I wish everyone a very productive and enjoyable meeting, and again thanks to our hosts Qualcomm and Broadcom.
