Brussels, September 17, 2020 – The US Department of Justice’s (DoJ) supplement to its 2015 Business Review Letter to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) disregards data on the IEEE’s activity, blurs DoJ’s own guidance and undermines its own procedure to provide such guidance.
In 2015, the DoJ issued a business review letter to IEEE advising that it did not intend to challenge the IEEE’s IPR policy if its updates were to go into effect. On 10 September, the DoJ took what it characterized as the “extraordinary step” of issuing a supplement to that 2015 business review letter (BRL) to the IEEE.
In issuing the supplement, the DoJ ignores hard data showing that new standardization work at the IEEE has been at its highest levels ever since the IPR policy updates were completed in 2015 while contributions to IEEE standards, and technical work within IEEE working groups, continues apace, the IEEE’s activity log and studies show.
Download full statement here.