SSO participation and the role of incremental value licensing

Patent hold-up and opportunistic licensing within cooperative standard setting organization have received considerable attention in academic and policy circles, and a number of rules and policies have been suggested to curb these problems. In our Payments and Participation paper, summarized above, we consider one of the most popular suggestions: capping patent holder licensing fees at the incremental value that the patented technology contributes to the standard. The idea behind this cap would be to limit a patent holder's licensing fees to the level that could be obtained ex ante, before the standard is fully developed and when patented technology may compete with alternatives.