Open Innovation encourages firms to employ external technologies as well as develop them internally. It often depends on a licensing model in which external developers of technology are adequately compensated by technology users. Recent antitrust practice, exemplified by the U.S. District Court decision in favor of the Federal Trade Commission against Qualcomm, threatens to dramatically impair the licensing model by reducing rewards to external developers and complicating, if not crippling, industry-standard licensing practices. This legal myopia, should it become ratified by the Court of Appeals, risks destroying Open Innovation in mobile wireless technology. The likely consequence is lower and slower innovation, and the emergence of oligopolistic software stacks that will be worse for most developers and implementers, and in particular for consumers.
