The OxFora 14th Intellectual Property and Competition Forum, entitled “The Global Chess Game: International Patent Strategy in a Fragmented World”, which is taking place at the DPMA Forum in Munich (as well as online), started today (June 16, 2026 ip fray article).
ip fray is listening in to all the online sessions and plans to cover all of the highlights from the two-day event.
Injunctions at the centre of gravity in global patent strategy
The first online panel of the day, moderated by a partner at Licks Attorneys (ip fray firm profile), focused on injunctions as a tool – and for some a hindrance – to patent licensing negotiations.
“What is the number one cause of friction between parties?” The Licks partner asked their panel. This was probably the only thing all four speakers agreed on: transparency. For the Dell speaker, the biggest friction point is finding a way to reach a resolution that is “fully informed” and “guarantees” the non-discriminatory part of FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory), which everyone has faith in. Both representatives from Huawei and Qualcomm agreed on this, adding that the suspicion about the terms that competitors have is the biggest impediment.
“Having more information about the pricing is useful for getting to a resolution,” they noted. But, Qualcomm’s speaker added, transparency is a two-way problem – and friction can only be removed if both sides of the table are open and honest, during and after the negotiation.
Injunction requests ‘mean FRAND has failed’
Dell’s speaker emphasized the need for a final declaration of the FRAND rate. But, unsurprisingly, this was met by resistance by those from Qualcomm and Huawei.
The only way in which the determination of a stack can be made is when someone can adjudicate a dispute about the appropriate terms of an offer in a reliable manner, the SEP owners said. And, sometimes, injunctions in some spaces are “necessary” – in pharma and bio, for example, or in some niche tech areas, the exclusion of competitors is done for “good reasons”, they added.
Huawei’s speaker described a world in which there were no injunctions anywhere, comparing it to the subway system – without knowing that we as individuals would face fines, or being removed from the train network, we would be less inclined to buy a ticket for the subway in the first place. “It may sound polemic, but injunctions sometimes foster good-faith licensing negotiations,” they explained. “They are necessary to get parties back to the table.”
Dell’s panelist pushed back on this, claiming that there is “no reason why an injunction should be a default”. They then noted that if injunctions are indeed a “punishment” when an implementer has “misbehaved”, then they asked why there are no proper financial consequences for an SEP holder engaging in hold-up.
This was met with pushback from both SEP owners on the panel. Qualcomm’s speaker specifically noted that injunctions only come after both sides of the table have agreed to make FRAND commitments – and an implementer has clearly violated this:
“A fundamental premise of asking the court to grant an injunction means FRAND has failed.”
More litigation, everywhere
Does the availability of injunctions in places like the UPC, Germany, and Brazil mean fewer people are filing cases in the U.S.?
No, was the consensus reached on the panel. All of the companies have seen that there is instead a huge advantage to having multi-front litigation, with companies seeking both high damages awards in the U.S. courts, and more instantly powerful remedies, such as injunctions.
This is something the Amazon speaker noted they would do “if they wanted to make the most money off of people, no matter how powerful their patents were”.
“It’s a logical approach,” the panelist added.
In a separate discussion about rate-setting, Amazon’s panelist also noted that all licensees want is “certainty and finality”.
“We don’t want to negotiate for years,” they emphasized.
But, they noted, there still isn’t a place that implementers can go to adjudicate terms when negotiations go south. So rate-setting would be a great solution, and it would not matter where this was done, they said.