Quote of the day: business strategy
Litigation . . . is a matter of business strategy.
Kazumi Kuriyama, general manager of Pioneer’s intellectual property unit as quoted in “Asian Electronics Makers Waging All-Out Patent War,” June 10, 2009.
A flat-screen TV typically contains memory, image-processing chips and technologies from multiple companies. Those technologies are made available to a given manufacturer through a series of cross licensing agreements.
Things get infinitely more interesting when the cross licenses are up for renewal and terms can’t be agreed to. That’s when litigation lightning coupled with the threat of an injunction is most likely to occur.
With product sales in the billions and damage claims for patent infringement in the hundreds of millions of dollars, there is considerable pressure to reach a favorable resolution and litigation becomes another tool in the negotiation arsenal.
Tags: cross licensing, patents