Hello, I'm Mike Swift, Mlex's chief correspondent for digital risk.

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After a long wait for Senate confirmation, Macon Delrahim, the new

assistant attorney general for antitrust at the U.S. Department of Justice recently used one of

his first policy species to issue a pretty forceful statement on the role of antitrust law

and policing patents on essential technologies, such as 4G or Wi-Fi.

MLEX was at Delrahim's November 10th speech at the USC Law School in Los Angeles,

and here to discuss the remarks and their ramifications as our senior antitrust correspondent here in San Francisco, Josh Sisko.

Josh, welcome.

Hi, Mike.

So Josh, why is his speech significant?

Why should we care about what he said?

So Delrahim reversed several years of policy under the Obama administration, which has typically favored the interests of licensees in these negotiations.

So patents are typically a right to exclude their illegal monopoly, but when the patents cover technologies used in standards,

that gives the owner of that patent a much more market power. And so in these negotiations, the patent holders,

the fear is that the patent holders will use that market power

to extract higher royalty rates.

What Delrahim said is that it's actually the reverse of that is of a much bigger concern.

El-Reheim said it's actually holdout that is the bigger concern where the implementers,

the licensees who use the patents and the technology and the products that they make,

that they will hold out in licensing negotiations in order to get a below market rate.

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