US court rules on royalty for 2G, 3G, 4G SEPs

The court took a firm stand against royalty stacking. The judgement cited one of the key reasons for using top down analysis is that it prevents royalty stacking. The court also found that the results from the ex-standard approach proposed by Ericsson are highly suggestive of royalty stacking and lack fundamental credibility. The court adopted a maximum aggregate royalty rate based on various public announcements made by SEP owners and industry leaders for the top down calculations.
The court relied on the top down approach for determining a fair and reasonable royalty rate. It said: “A top down model aims to value a portfolio of SEPs by determining a fair and reasonable total aggregate royalty for all patents that are essential to a standard.” “It then apportions that royalty to the SEP owners based on the relative value of their portfolio against the value of all patents essential to the standard.”
Rates under FRAND:
4G- 0.45%
3G- 0.30%
2G-0.16%
(source: IP Pro Patents)

Limits of cross-licensing agreement

HTC are the third party beneficiaries of a covenant contained in a 1998 cross-licence agreement between Qualcomm Inc and the Claimant, Philips. The three patents in issue concern High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and have been declared essential by Philips to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) standard developed under the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). HSPA was added to the UMTS standard in 2002 (enabling handsets to download data at high speeds) and in 2004 (for uplink data transfer).  The alleged infringing HTC handsets implement releases 5 and 6 of UMTS, and have HSPA.  HSPA is a hybrid TDMA/CDMA system. 
HTC argued that they are covered by the covenant not to sue, because (i) they have been designated a "CDMA Technically Necessary Patent Beneficiary" in writing by Qualcomm to Philips; (ii) the patents have been declared essential to the UMTS standard; and (iii) the UMTS standard is a "CDMA Wireless Industry Standard".  Philip submitted that the alleged infringements arise from HTC's implementation of high speed packet access (HSPA) which is not an act of infringement of a "CDMA Wireless Industry Standard".

Further reading.