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LTE patent pool effort still torn between three competing bodies
Published: 7 February, 2010
Tags >> Patents/IPR | LTE
The three main patent pool organizations have been vying for LTE's favors since last spring and all now claim to have signed up supporters for their efforts, suggesting these are still too fragmented to address the licensing concerns around the technology just yet.
Via Licensing, Sisvel and MPEG LA are the three bodies aiming to administer what could be a lucrative pool, given the scope of the platform and its contributors. Patent royalty burdens, and their impact on competitive pricing, are a key concern in the handset community. The goal, set by Nokia and others, of getting royalties in 4G devices below 5% of handset price, seems unrealistic given the fees involved in the bilateral licensing deals already agreed between some major IPR holders. Some vendors are supporting pools, but important players like Qualcomm remain unconvinced, and there is no consensus yet on which pool should handle LTE.
Via Licensing says 14 LTE patent owners attended its first joint licensing meeting recently, though did not reveal their identities. It just said they "represent a broad spectrum of leading LTE stakeholders from China, France, Finland, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and the United States". The next meeting is scheduled for March.
Over at Sisvel, the organization said 20 companies were taking part in its efforts to build an LTE pool, also citing supporters from the key vendor countries - China, Japan, Korea, Europe and North America.
MPEG LA held its first meeting of 12 patent holders in late September 2009 though has published no updates since.
Only one pool can handle an individual technology, but must get a critical mass of support to do so. It is safe to assume most of the attendees at these preliminary summits are overlapping.
WiMAX has moved well ahead of LTE in the patent pool respect, setting up the Open Patent Alliance in 2008, and issuing a call for patents last spring, with Via selected to administer the process. Its key members are Acer, Alcatel-Lucent, Alvarion, Cisco, Clearwire, Huawei, Intel and Samsung. It has also made veiled comments that it would like to bring LTE within its auspices.
"With LTE deployment now an operating reality, the economic logic of moving development cycles ahead to commercialization through patent pools is stronger than ever before," commented Frank Bernhard, technology economist at OMNI Consulting Group. "Our research shows how patent pool licensing demonstrates certain efficiencies in minimizing product lifecycle costs while more quickly generating revenue productivity."
