The purpose of this article is to provide a comparative analysis of the case law developed by the courts of the European Union, United States and India on the issue of reverse patent holdup in standard-essential patent li censing. The importance of this issue is grounded in the need for a functional market for technologies that balances the interests of innovators, which rely on in centives to further develop technologies, and implementers, which rely on these technologies to make standard-compliant devices available to end-users.1 This balance is disturbed when the incentives for innovators are constrained in ways that are commercially unviable, or when access to technologies is hindered by strategic and opportunistic behavior of the patent holder. Either way, an environment is created where innovation is at suboptimal level.