Regency still loses its MPEG appeal
Although it rejected the primary judge’s interpretation of s145 of the Patents Act 1990, the Full Court has nonetheless dismissed Regency’s appeal seeking to terminate its licence of MPEG patents.
In 2009, Regency took a licence of a bundle of patents from the MPEG patent pool so that it could make, amongst other things, DVD and Blu-Ray players. All the patents were necessary to make MPEG–2 compliant equipment, but they related to different inventions. By July 2012, some of the patents, but not all, had expired. Regency sought to terminate the licence early, relying on s145.
Section 145 provides:
(1) A contract relating to the lease of, or a licence to exploit, a patented invention may be terminated by either party, on giving 3 months’ notice in writing to the other party, at any time after the patent, or all the patents, by which the invention was protected at the time the contract was made, have ceased to be in force.
(2) Subsection (1) applies despite anything to the contrary in that contract or in any other contract.
The Full Court agreed with Regency that the trial judge`s interpretation of,s145 was wrong but, even so, the right to terminate the licence under s145 did not accrue until all the patents licensed at the time the licence was granted had expired. As there were patents still on foot, therefore, Regency did not have the right under s145 to terminate.
The Full Court considered that the reference to “a patented invention”, an expression not defined in the Patents Act was simply a reference to an invention that was patented, rather than something which was patentable subject matter.
Further, s23(b) of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 meant that the reference to the singular – a patented invention – could be read as including the plural. While recognising that s145 was intended to protect licensees from being unfairly required to pay licence fees after the patents had expired, Bennett and Pagone JJ pointed out that, as the licensor could also invoke s145, a licensee could be exposed to even greater unfairness if the licence could be terminated after the expiry of one or only some patents:
30 … if MPEG were entitled to terminate the licence when one of the patents or all of the patents for one of the inventions had expired, Regency would be in the position that, having implemented the Standard, it would be required to cease exploitation of the outstanding patents or negotiate a fresh licence.
31 The primary judge recognised the lack of commercial reality and potential unfairness in such circumstances and so do we. It would lead to the absurd result that parties wishing to negotiate for a patent pool would necessarily have to enter into multiple contracts or face the uncertainties and possible damage caused upon the expiry of a single patent of that patent pool. This would be of particular difficulty for a licensee which had “tooled up”, or entered into financial obligations on the faith of the right to exploit the necessary patent, and could also affect third party end users of a product.
Earlier at [25], Bennett and Pagone JJ had emphasised the importance of certainty provided by contracts:
Regency points to commercial and policy reasons why a licensee should not continue to pay royalties where an invention the subject of the licence is no longer the subject of a subsisting patent. However, this possible disadvantage to a licensee can be taken into account during negotiations for a contract. Regency negotiated a licence fee that included patents now expired but must be taken to have been aware of the expiry of patents during the term of the Contract when it negotiated that fee. This is supported by the fact that the October 2009 amendment to the Contract provided for royalty rates, those rates decreasing over specified periods of time in recognition of the ever approaching end to each of the patents (as observed by the primary judge at [11]).
While this case did not explicitly turn on questions of misuse of market power, that analysis does not bode well for the ACCC`s pending antitrust action against Pfizer.
Nicholas J delivered a concurring judgment.
Regency Media Pty Ltd v MPEG LA, L.L.C [2014] FCAFC 183
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