Back in January, we reported that Philips had filed a complaint with the European Union over Taiwan granting compulsory licensing of their CD-R patents to local disc manufacturers. DigiTimes has reported that the European Union has finally responded to Philips' complaint and is launching an in-depth investigation.
The European Commission announced on March 1 that it has launched an in-depth investigation into the WTO consistency of the granting of compulsory licenses by Taiwan for recordable compact discs (CDRs) under the Trade Barriers Regulation...
...The case is a result of a July 2004 ruling by the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO), under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), that called for the compulsory licensing of five Royal Philips Electronics' CD-R disc patents to Gigastorage, a second-tier optical disc maker in Taiwan. TIPO based its decision on the fact that Philips had refused to renegotiate the CD-R fixed royalty charge rate of US$0.035 per disc, despite the fact that OEM prices had fallen from US$5 in 1997 to US$0.19 in the first half of 2003.
While Taiwan has agreed to cooperate in the investigation, Philips has gone ahead and appealed to the Taipei High Administrative Court in an attempt to cancel the compulsory licensing of its patents. Either way, this is going to get messy. If you'd like to read more, head on over to DigiTimes.
