Congress to discuss sales bans if key patents infringed

The Congress is considering whether companies that hold patents essential to a standard, such as a digital movie format, should be forbidden from asking that infringing products be banned from the U.S. market. Companies that hold patents essential to building devices to comply with these standards are expected to license them on fair terms to everyone, even competitors. The expectation is they will make less on each license, but will license the technology so broadly that the patent will still be extremely lucrative. But in an all-out patent war between smartphone makers, Motorola Mobility, recently acquired by Google Inc, has raised hackles by asking for sales bans on products that infringe essential patents.

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