Context: On Monday (March 23, 2026), it became known that the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ or DOJ) is investigating the members of the Automotive Licensing Negotiation Group (ALNG). Previously, the Antitrust Division’s Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Dina Kallay, had described the European Commission’s (EC) comfort letter to the ALNG as “concerning and unusual” (October 10, 2025 ip fray article).
What’s new: At the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) LeadershIP 2026 conference on intellectual property (thus the capitalization of IP in the name), Ms. Kallay delivered a keynote speech, Fueling Innovation: Antitrust and Intellectual Property in Support of American Technological Leadership. Standard-essential patents (SEPs) and the DOJ’s related Statement of Interest in a Disney v. InterDigital case (October 7, 2025 ip fray article) were a major topic. The following statements by Ms. Kallay in a Q&A after a panel session are worth noting in light of the DOJ’s preliminary investigation of the ALNG and transatlantic divergence on competition enforcement in the SEP context:
- In response to a question about whether LNGs were needed to counterbalance bargaining power in licensing negotiations with patent pools, Ms. Kallay say that “LNGs are groupings of competitors, patent pools are groupings of complements”. Any suggestion that patent pools have market power requiring LNGs as a countervailing factor is a “totally false premise”.
- The appropriate market definition for LNGs is, is Ms. Kallay’s view, the relevant “field of use”.
Those positions on market definition and power validate the ones previously taken by ip fray. Even if a pool hypothetically provided access to the entirety of patents reading on a given standard, there would be no market power, and much less when bilateral licenses are available in the alternative to a pool license.
For the automakers being investigated over their contemplated ALNG, the DOJ’s views are a clear indication that a governmental antitrust lawsuit could follow (in the absence of a consent decree).