"Will chip manufacurers have to be revisited so that patent holders are able to collect full and fair value for original licenses granted on the basis of downstream royalty collection?"
You raise an interesting legal/contractual question. As all have heard me spout, a contract (license) is only valid based on agreed INTENT. If our licenses with chip manufacturers included language simto LG's language in the licenses, then it seems to me the agreed intent can't be met. Thus those licenses (e.g., Intel and AMD) may be possible to be "revisited" since it is possible that those licenses are no longer valid.
Do they contain such language? Based on the warnings to sub-tier users by higher-tier manufacturers (like Fujitsu, I believe, where they state that users of their product should coordinate with TPL for a license), it would certainly seem so.
The saga continues.
Is anyone really all that surprised by this Quanta/LG outcome? To me, the only surprise is that language was placed in the license to Intel to avoid this concern, and that language is apparently (and not too surprisingly) useless. IMO, there's going to be a lot of renegotiation of licenses going on (not just us, but all patent holders who have licensed to any base/1st tier manufacturer of anything).
Your thoughts?
SGE
