Apple, Ford Push Agency to Keep Standard-Setting Patents Policy

Apple Inc. and Ford Motor Co. are among over three dozen companies and associations urging the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to preserve a policy discouraging the use of injunctions to stop companies from using standard essential patents.

The policy statement “reflects a balance that is consistent with American law, incentivizes innovation, and encourages domestic investment in critical technologies, the groups wrote in a Dec. 5 letter to PTO Directer Andrei Iancu and Wilbur Ross, secretary of the Commerce Department, the patent office’s parent agency.

“The 2013 Policy Statement fully allows for appropriate monetary remedies if patent infringement is proven, ...