As noted in our Information Letter N.S. 179, in 1992 the Department of Justice announced its intention to be more active in seeking to prevent injury to United States export opportunities resulting from acts or agreements carried out abroad. The first tangible result of that change of policy has recently been seen in the case of United States v. Pilkington plc. Although the case was immediately settled by a consent decree, the case is of interest for the basis on which the Antitrust Department founded its case. This was essentially that after expiration of the basic patents on its technology, the licensor's residual intellectual property rights in a licensed process were "of insufficient value" to permit the licensor to restrict the territory within which licensees could use the licensed technology. It was alleged that this policy "reduced the potential reward that licensees could expect to reap from their own further innovations". Under the consent decree, Pilkington agreed to terminate its restraints on U.S. companies and also on foreign companies who would sell their technology within the United States.

June 1994 Index