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The arguments over essential patent holdings in LTE drag on, with only one point of agreement - the dream of driving down royalty levels dramatically compared to 3G is fading. Most of the huge IPR holders in W-CDMA - Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson and InterDigital - are also claiming a big share of the LTE patent base, but so are Samsung, Huawei and the remains of Nortel (whose portfolio is up for sale). Various patent pools are trying to sign up enough of the patent owners to create a workable LTE group, but progress is slowed by the politics of the situation. Qualcomm, which does not favor pools, has already signed licensing deals for its OFDM patents with four of the top five phonemakers, and now Ericsson is getting aggressive too, insisting it has 25% of the essential IPR in LTE.

The Swedish giant had been reported to have significantly less patent power in LTE than in W-CDMA, and recently, analysts at Informa placed the company behind Qualcomm, InterDigital, Samsung and Huawei in the rankings. The ownership of recognized essential IPR is important not just for royalty revenues, or bargaining power in cross-licensing deals, but in influence over the whole sector.

Ericsson's chief intellectual property officer, Kasim Alfalahi, told ConnectedPlanet he did not know what methodology Informa used, but questioned its findings. He said most studies have used one of two "flawed" methodologies - a keyword search of global patent application databases, which does not distinguish patents that are essential specifically to LTE; or a tally of the number of patent applications for LTE submitted globally. But while more precise, this does not take into account applications that will be rejected, or prove insignificant to LTE standards.

Alfalahi told the online newspaper: "From our perspective, at this time the only valid way to make a judgment is to see what companies have contributed to the standards and which technologies have been adopted." Based on its own calculations by those lights, Ericsson estimates that it has almost 24% of awarded patents deemed essential to support the LTE standard. When the remaining patents are awarded it will have closer to 25%, the largest share and about twice as many as the next largest holder. Alfalahi says his method, given that some patent applications are not decided yet, has a margin of error of 5%, so Ericsson could end up anywhere between 20% and 30% - well ahead of the 7% Informa estimated (about the same as Nokia and LG). Informa also believes only one-third of those Ericsson patents are essential to the standard.

Unlike Qualcomm - which by almost everyone's calculations remains the leader in essential IPR - Ericsson is favouring a patent pool approach, which would set the total royalty rate for combined patents at under 10%. This would aim to reduce handset cost and enable holders with no IPR to participate in the market.

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