In an article on November 27, 2012, Law360 quoted Venable partner Len Gordon on a recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) merger decision in which the agency prevented Robert Bosch GmbH from pursuing injunctive relief over a series of standard-essential patents (SEPs). The FTC said Bosch, in its acquisition of SPX Service Solutions U.S. LLC, could not seek injunctive relief over SPX's catalogue of SEPs and must agree to license them for free to companies using certain standards.
Commenting on the decision, Gordon said "If this was a stand-alone conduct case, the parties' incentives are a lot different." He added "Here my guess is [that] the amount of dollars tied up in standard setting conduct was probably relatively small compared to the value of merger, [but] if you're talking about a patent that's at the core of somebody's business, there are really different incentives."