{"id":148651,"date":"2020-08-17T16:29:50","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T15:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/?p=148651"},"modified":"2025-05-30T17:34:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T17:34:25","slug":"demystifying-5g-standard-essential-patent-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/blog\/demystifying-5g-standard-essential-patent-landscape\/","title":{"rendered":"Demystifying 5G standard essential patent landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new Clarivate report from Derwent\u2122 patent experts Ed White, Gaurav Sawant and Parijat Oak explores 5G standards-essential patent declarations<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A basic principle of communicating any message is that what\u2019s sent is understandable when received. In the competitive and innovative world we live in, the devices and infrastructure over which messages are sent, transported and received are designed and built by a large number of different companies. But the need for communication means that they need to work to a standardized protocol of message and data exchange.<\/p>\n

Over time, this need for consistency has extended from phone calls and faxes to influence how different smartphones from various manufacturers connect to cell phone networks provided by a competitive market of network providers.<\/p>\n

That means that the telecommunication standards for mobile devices of every flavor have increased in their complexity and the amount of technology they cover \u2013 from antennae design and the way radio waves are encoded, to how devices are allocated a mobile signal connection.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Understanding 5G standards setting and patent declarations<\/h3>\n

In the 5G world, the basic principles of mobile device connectivity have increased again \u2013 in performance terms such as speed and bandwidth, but also in how many devices can be connected to a local cell network a time. For 5G, this has increased enormously over 4G and previous protocols. The complexity and breadth of the standards and protocols for 5G are greater than ever.<\/p>\n

The source of these standards and protocols is the innovators and telecommunication companies themselves. Through a process of conference and discussion, standards-setting organizations (such as the European Telecommunications Standards Institute or the International Telecommunications Union) take ideas, help with consensus building and hone in on which approaches, technologies and techniques will be incorporated and which will not.<\/p>\n

As part of the responsibility of working in and with the protocol-setting process, the companies involved are required to tell the standards body if they have any intellectual property assets (mainly patents) that are likely to restrict usage of the protocol developed. This process is known as standards-essential patent declarations \u2013 where anybody who wants to use the devices that work to the standard would necessarily be using the patented technology of a patent holder.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

New analysis from Clarivate reviews 5G patent declarations<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

I recently co-authored a report with Gaurav Sawant (Senior IP Manager, Clarivate\u2122) and Parijat Oak (Associate IP Director, Clarivate) on 5G-declared patent statistics reviewing the outcomes of standards-essential patent declarations, Demystifying the 5G standards essential patent landscape<\/em>1<\/sup>. To read the full report, please see the form to the right of this post.<\/p>\n

We found more than 27,000 individual patented ideas (covered by a much greater number of duplicate applications and issued patent rights in local legal jurisdictions). Just over half of those patented ideas have so far generated in-force patent rights, while the balance remains patent-pending.<\/p>\n

Three<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>quarters of those in-force patent rights are held by\u00a0<\/span><\/span>seven companies<\/span><\/span>:<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Huawei, Samsung, ZTE, Nokia, Ericsson, LG and Qualcomm<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>T<\/span><\/span>he remaining quarter<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>are\u00a0<\/span><\/span>spread across a further 170 entities\u00a0<\/span><\/span>comprising<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>mobile and network device companies, service providers, chip manufacturers and research institutes.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Patent declarations are an important first step in understanding the 5G patent ecosystem<\/h3>\n

A major difficulty\u00a0<\/span><\/span>in\u00a0<\/span><\/span>understanding which patents are essential to\u00a0<\/span><\/span>a standard comes from the fact that declarations are necessarily over-broad. Companies<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>with patent portfolios in the space around the standard\u00a0<\/span><\/span>will<\/span><\/span>\u00a0operate\u00a0<\/span><\/span>from an abundance of caution<\/span><\/span>, and\u00a0<\/span><\/span>often declare potentially relevant patent assets that in fact read only very narrowly, partially or indeed not at all onto the\u00a0<\/span><\/span>final\u00a0<\/span><\/span>standard due to the<\/span><\/span>\u00a0nuances of patent \u201cclaim\u201d structure.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What that means in practice is that our statistics surrounding standards declarations are just the first stage to understand the \u2018standards essential patent\u2019 (SEP) ecosystem for 5G. The world\u2019s intellectual property professionals are needed to jump into these assets and review them for which are indeed essential.<\/p>\n

For those companies that are looking to use the incredible potential of 5G-levels of connectivity \u2013 for industrial automation, for infrastructure monitoring, for smart cars and cities for example \u2013 this is a process to keep an eye on. The outcome of the SEP identification process is one that will determine who you partner with for access to technology, what approach you choose and ultimately how the commercial realities of your innovation will work once it reaches the market.<\/p>\n

To learn more, download and read the full report here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Interested in more research from the Derwent team? Read about companies headed for the Top 100 Innovators list<\/a>, or see our recent analysis of the COVID-19 patent landscape<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

1<\/sup>Clarivate was retained to prepare this report by Sidley Austin LLP on behalf of its client.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new Clarivate report from Derwent\u2122 patent experts Ed White, Gaurav Sawant and Parijat Oak explores 5G standards-essential patent declarations A basic principle of communicating any message is that what\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":265701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[828,1012,22,1006],"class_list":["post-148651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-5g","tag-covid-19","tag-derwent","tag-ip-group"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":148651},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284304,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148651\/revisions\/284304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}