Guidelines of reviewing undue exercise of intellectual property rights

I found a slightly more detailed statement of the law in relation to high-tech cooperation in the Korean IP Guidelines. The statement is very brief and provides no real guidance as to the legal theory under which horizontal cooperation would be illegal. Note that neither Art. 19 nor the Guidelines on Art. 19 produced by the KFTC elaborate on the high-tech issue. I think it would be appropriate for the KFTC to review Art. 7 of the IP Guidelines in light of the US law (as well as law in other jurisdictions) with particular reference to the work of Carl Shapiro (more detail about the Antitrust/IP guru in a later blog).

Guidelines of reviewing undue exercise of intellectual property rights (KFTC Aug. 2000)

Article 7 Cross-Licensing and Pooling-Arrangement of Intellectual Property Rights

When anti-competitiveness occurs from signing cross-licensing contracts or pooling-arrangement of intellectual property rights between licensors who are in mutually competitive or substitutive relations, provisions under Article 19 (Restrictions on Improper Concerted Acts) shall be applied.

Yep that is it! All one sentence of it! Also there is a problem of scope in that patent settlements and standards setting are not mentioned here. Will definitely have to analyse these points in my Ph.D!