The automotive industry is being revolutionized by continuous cloud connectivity, autonomous driving technologies, drive train electrification and shared mobility. These transformations are being facilitated in part by the standardized cellular technologies now commonly implemented in “connected vehicles” or “CVs”. The proportion of vehicles shipped...
The European Union has declared that USB Type-C standard connectors will be required for charging various devices sold from 2024. This seems to have grabbed as much media attention as the far more significant announcement of its new Digital Markets Act that will intervene...
The EU is in grave danger of “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” in its prospective attempts to reform SEP licensing with interventions for the purported benefit of European Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in IoT.
Europe was once preeminent in cellular communications with...
It took the industry 30 years to consolidate mobile communications developments into a single 4G standard with the introduction of LTE and the demise of WiMAX. That attainment—also in 5G—should be cherished; but it is imperiled by geopolitical developments.
While the international response to Russia’s...
Public comments on SEPs and FRAND licensing sought for the US Department of Justice’s Draft Policy Statement and the UK Intellectual Property Office’s Call for Views.
It is vital that the fundamental sanction in patent law—of the temporary right to exclude—along with other remedies, including...
MPEG LA and Unified Patents have just launched their Alium patent pool program that seeks to license 4G LTE and 5G standard-essential patents (SEPs) for a minimum charge of $10 per Open RAN Radio Unit (RU). Previously, attention to licensing and royalty charges for...
A recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Paul Wolfowitz, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense and former President of the World Bank, controversially suggests that auctioning spectrum for 5G is detrimental to the U.S. and helps Huawei. While spectrum allocation is an...
Aggregate royalty payments for licensing cellular technology standard-essential patents (SEPs) in smartphones have remained in modest single-digit percentages and have declined since 2013.
This defies purported concerns that the stacking of patent royalties paid to multiple licensors have led to or would lead to unreasonably...
An upcoming mobile communications metamorphosis—delivered by 5G standalone (SA) mode, 5G-Advanced and 6G—is being facilitated by complementary innovations and transformations in computing architectures and their supply. Change will be huge but gradual over the next decade. With 5G yet to make its mark beyond...
SoftBank’s proposed sale of Arm to NVIDIA should be blocked. While there are major UK national interest concerns about this transaction, the threat and likelihood of severe anticompetitive effects are global and more fundamental. NVIDIA’s control over Arm will throttle the advance of other...
While litigation is bogging down the licensing of cellular standard essential patents (SEPs) in vehicles with disputes about where in the production supply chain licensing may or must occur—from chip, to module, to telematic control unit (TCU), to entire vehicle—this is also delaying payment...
In various industries including pharmaceuticals, where a product is typically protected by only a few patents, if intellectual property is licensed at all, licensing tends to be atomized: company-by company for individual patents or small portfolios, and nation-by-nation rather than globally in many cases.
In...
The U.K. government has banished Huawei’s 5G network kit. Supply must cease before 2021 and operators must rip out and replace all installed equipment by 2027. This is tightening of its previous policy —instigated as recently as January 2020—to exclude “high-risk vendors” from an...
The long-term growth trajectories, to 2025 and beyond, for all telecommunications, including mobile and 5G, are significantly elevated by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the looming climate change crisis, that will also make us stop traveling around so much in motorized transport.
Since...
Technological improvements in cars over the decades have generally reduced costs or increased performance and safety. “Analog” technologies including collapsible steering columns, crumple zones and seatbelts have saved car occupants from death or serious injury. Many digital technologies have also improved our in-car experience...
LTE’s introduction a decade ago and its development as the definitive 4G mobile communications standard which predominates in smartphones is an outstanding accomplishment. Competition has served technology innovators, manufacturers, mobile network operators, over-the-top service providers and end-users extremely well. Markets have functioned and advanced...
Longstanding and economically efficient balance in Standard-Essential Patent licensing is being destabilized by misinformation and manipulation of commercial practices and of benchmarks in Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory licensing. This is epitomized in litigation between Apple and Qualcomm, commencing January 2017, until settlement in April...
While mobile virtual network operators may appear to be back in fashion, none of them are significant players among US wireless carriers. The largest of what are commonly—but incorrectly—called MVNOs, including Boost and Metro in the US, have long since ceased to be MVNOs,...
And some mid-bands are more accessible with better ecosystem support
Rather like with real estate, while beachfront properties are coveted, properties elsewhere providing more space and better access can be the most useful.
Cellular technologies have improved to utilize the greater capacity in the larger bandwidths—including in...
Cellular technology companies with substantial device businesses — including Huawei and Samsung today, and Nokia until it sold its handset business in 2014 — generate no more than modest net licensing revenues, despite the significant Standard-Essential Patent (SEP) portfolio sizes they have declared. Crucially,...
America is becoming more joined up in its pursuit of global 5G leadership, with presidential vision and objectives, complementary corporate strategies and the FCC’s plans to Facilitate America's Superiority in 5G Technology (the 5G FAST Plan).
In the interests of maximising international competitiveness and national...
National security issues have come to the fore with 5G equipment vendor selection for network deployments and upcoming service launches over the next year or two. Cyber security threats of many kinds are real and significant; but debate about this has become deeply entwined...
The notion of “peak smartphone” is widely discussed of late, including by the Economist. Revenues are flattening with longer replacement cycles, saturating markets, resistance to Apple’s price increases, decreasing prices among Android’s fiercely competitive OEMs and allegedly diminishing technical improvements in successive new device...
US, China, Japan and Korea are seizing global leadership in 5G with support of coherent and helpful industrial policies in those nations across the entire mobile ecosystem including technology development, spectrum licensing, site acquisition and operator consolidation. All these nations will launch 3GPP standard-compliant...
