UHF RFID Standard Essential Patents 1Q 2015

TechIPm, LLC’s UHF RFID standard essential patents research for the US market identified total of 170 issued patents in the USPTO as the potential candidates for UHF RFID standard essential patents as of  1Q, 2015.

To evaluate the essentiality of a UHF RFID patent, patent disclosures in claims and detail description for each UHF RFID patent is compared to ISO/IEC 18000-C technical specifications. Among 18 IPR shareholders, Round Rock Research LLC, a patent assertion entity, is the leader followed by Symbol Technology, Intermec, ZIH (Zebra), Impinj, Atmel, and Alien.

Round Rock Research LLC was founded by a billionaire John Desmarais, a famous patent attorney for his won in a $1.52 billion verdict for Alcatel-Lucent against Microsoft in 2007. Round Rock Research LLC became the second-largest NPE following the Intellectual Ventures by acquiring a portfolio of 4,500 patents from Micron Technology Inc., the biggest U.S. maker of semiconductor chips. Recently, Round Rock settled patent disputes with several UHF RFID manufactures. Round Rock Research LLC is now operating successful licensing program collaborating with IPVALUE, an IP monetization consulting firm.

For more information, please contact Alex Lee at alexglee@techipm.com .

©2015 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved

http://www.techipm.com/

Internet of Things Standard Essential Patents Global IPR Governance 1Q 2014

TechIPm, LLC’s Internet of Things (IoT) standard essential patents research for the US and EU market of NFC, UHF RFID and Zigbee for wireless sensor networks identified total of 380 issued patents in the USPTO and EPO as the potential candidates for IoT standard essential patents as of January 31, 2014.

To evaluate the essentiality of a IoT patent, patent disclosures in claims and detail description for each NFC patent is compared to the latest versions of NFC Forum’s standard specifications (Activity, Digital, Protocol, LLCP (Logical Link Control Protocol), NDEF (Data Exchange Format), RF/Analog, RTD (Record Type Definition), Connection Handover, and Tag Operation) and ISO/IEC 18092 – 2004; UHF RFID patent is compared to ISO/IEC 18000-C; and Zigbee patent is compared to IEEE 802.15.4-2006.

Among 84 IPR shareholders, NXP is the leader followed by ZIH (Zebra), Intermec, Symbol (Motorola Solutions), Broadcom (Innovision), Sony, Atmel, Round Rock and Samsung.

For more information, please contact Alex Lee at alexglee@techipm.com .

©2014 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved

http://www.techipm.com/

Round Rock (NPE) Dominates UHF RFID Standard Essential Patents

TechIPm, LLC’s UHF RFID standard essential patent research for the US market reviles that IPR share of Round Rock Research LLC (NPE) accounts for 13% of UHF RFID Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) issued in the USPTO as of 3Q 2013. To evaluate the essentiality of a UHF RFID patent, patent disclosures in claims and detail description for each UHF RFID patent are compared to the most recent version of the ISO/IEC 18000-C technical specifications. Total of 134 issued patents are identified as the potential candidates for UHF RFID SEPs relating to UHF tag and reader products.

Round Rock Research LLC was founded by a billionaire John Desmarais, a famous patent attorney for his won in a $1.52 billion verdict for Alcatel-Lucent against Microsoft in 2007. Round Rock Research LLC became the second-largest NPE following the Intellectual Ventures by acquiring a portfolio of 4,500 patents from Micron Technology Inc., the biggest U.S. maker of semiconductor chips. Recently, Round Rock settled patent dispute with Motorola Solutions. Round Rock Research LLC is now operating successful licensing program collaborating with IPVALUE, an IP monetization consulting firm.

©2013 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved

http://www.techipm.com/

RFID Patent in Lawsuit

USRE41531, titled “Communications Systems For Radio Frequency Identification”, is one of key patents that is used to sue retail companies (Macy’s, Gap, J.C. Penney etc.) by Round Rock Research LLC. Round Rock Research LLC is founded by John Desmarais, a famous patent attorney for his won in a $1.52 billion verdict for Alcatel-Lucent against Microsoft in 2007.

Ref. RFID Patent Lawsuit Early Warning: http://techipm-innovationfrontline.blogspot.com/2010/06/rfid-patent-lawsuit-early-warning.html

USRE41531 relates to collision avoidance technology, which is essential in operating passive UHF RFID system (standardized as ISO 18000-6C & EPC Global Gen 2):

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION: When the interrogator sends a message to a transponder device requesting a reply, there is a possibility that multiple transponder devices will attempt to respond simultaneously, causing a collision, and thus causing an erroneous message to be received by the interrogator. For example, if the interrogator sends out a command requesting that all devices within a communications range identity themselves, and gets a large number of simultaneously replies, the interrogator may not be able to interpret any of these replies. Thus, arbitration schemes are employed to permit communications free of collision.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION: One aspect of the invention provides a method of establishing wireless communications between an interrogator and individual ones of multiple wireless identification devices. The method comprises utilizing a tree search method to establish communications without collision between the interrogator and individual ones of the multiple wireless identification devices. A search tree is defined for the tree search method. The tree has multiple levels respectively representing subgroups of the multiple wireless identification devices. The method further comprising starting the tree search at a selectable level of the search tree. In one aspect of the invention, the method further comprises determining the maximum possible number of wireless identification devices that could communicate with the interrogator, and selecting a level of the search tree based on the determined maximum possible number of wireless identification devices that could communicate with the interrogator. In another aspect of the invention, the method further comprises starting the tree search at a level determined by taking the base two logarithm of the determined maximum possible number, wherein the level of the tree containing all subgroups is considered level zero, and lower levels are numbered consecutively.

©2012 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

RFID Patent Lawsuit Early Warning

According to the recent article by Bloomberg Businessweek, entitled "Billion-Dollar Lawyer Desmarais Quits Firm to Troll for Patents" (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-01/billion-dollar-lawyer-desmarais-quits-firm-to-troll-for-patents.html), Round Rock Research LLC became the second-largest NPE following the Intellectual Ventures by acquiring a portfolio of 4,500 patents from Micron Technology Inc., the biggest U.S. maker of semiconductor chips. Round Rock Research LLC is founded by John Desmarais, a famous patent attorney for his won in a $1.52 billion verdict for Alcatel-Lucent against Microsoft in 2007.

One interesting point to me is that the Micron Technology is one of key IPR holders in RFID essential technologies. According to the patent research for major RFID IPR shareholders (http://www.slideshare.net/alexglee/rfid-innovation-frontline-2009-1-q), Micron Technology held a portfolio of 123 issued RFID patents in the US as of January 1, 2009.

As John Desmarais is starting a look for potential infringers of the patents owned by Round Rock Research, a big patent lawsuit could happen someday when the current fragmented RFID market is matured and money making products are appeared.


©2010 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

Global RFID Patent Portfolios Analysis

Using the Innography, which is a business intelligent solution for IP management (http://www.innography.com/), the patent portfolios for RFID technologies are analyzed. To find the key IPR (issued patents and published applications) holders and their patent portfolios, semantic method is used for the keyword searching of the global patent data bases (USPTO, EPO, JIPO, KIPO, CIPO, WPO etc.)

As of Oct. 15 2009, the key IPR holders and their IPR shares for Mobile WiMAX are as follows:

Motorola (Symbol) (555), Fujitsu (274), Hitachi (272), Dai Nippon Printing (269), IBM (265), Intermec (214), Brother (190), Philips (189), Toshiba (138), TI (133), and Keystone (Micron) (128).

Using the identified key IPR holders' patents, patent portfolios are compared with respect to portfolio quality measures (citations, number of patents, and technology coverage) and portfolio utilization measures (revenue, global families, and litigation information).

As for the Mobile RFID, Motorola (Symbol), IBM, and Intermec form a leader group in portfolio management capability.


©2009 TechIPm, LLCAll Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

NEC's LTE Business Strategy: Synergy with RFID

Recently NEC announced the launching of NEC CASIO Mobile Communication which is a strategic alliance in mobile equipment business among NEC, Casio, and Hitachi.

As NEC is one of major LTE equipment providers for NTT DoCoMo’s LTE business which is going to launch its commercial LTE service in the mid of 2010 and Casio and Hitachi is one of major LTE equipment providers for KDDI’s LTE business which plans to launch its commercial LTE service at the end of 2011, the combined company has a high chance of leading the LTE equipments market.

In recent LTE IPR research by TechIPm, NEC was a ‘Dark Horse’ in LTE IPR for the LTE baseband modem products (http://techipm-innovationfrontline.blogspot.com/2009/09/lte-patent-landscape-for-ofdmmimo.html). In addition to the LTE innovation, NEC+Hitachi were one of innovation leaders in RFID based on TechIPm’s research for RFID patent landscape (http://techipm-innovationfrontline.blogspot.com/2009/04/rfid-innovation-frontline-2009-1q_30.html).

This rare case of being an innovation leader both in LTE and RFID will definitely benefit to NEC’s future business in an LTE based emerging market - RFID assisted intelligent mobile health care services.


©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

Near Field UHF RFID Innovations

As the increasing number of item level applications, there are a lot of interests in the "Near Field UHF RFID" technologies recently: Near-field UHF RFID technology can be used not only as the conventional far-field identification system but also can be used as the near-field identification system. The transmitting capability in the near-field is similar to the HF RFID system but the near-field UHF RFID system is faster and works better in metal and liquid environment.

Key word search for the near-field UHF RFID IPR shows that ZIH is the leader in the near-field UHF RFID system innovations as of Aug. 31 2009:

©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved

http://www.techipm.com/

RFID Patent Landscape 1Q 2009

Since the United States is such a large market for products and services from nearly all technology innovations, a patent counting for growth in patenting over a period of times and distribution across technology areas can be a good measuring tool for monitoring the evolution of technology innovations.

This report analyzes the patents issued by USPTO before January 1, 2009.

Contents:

1. Number of Patents by Year


2. Number of Patents by Assignee


3. Number of Patents by Assignee’s Nationality


4. Number of Patents by USPC


5. Number of Patents by Forward Citation


6. Number of Patents by Assignee for Customized Classifications


Link: http://techipm-rfidipr.blogspot.com/


©2009 TechIPm, LLC All RightsReserved
http://www.techipm.com/

RFID IPR: Patent Information Pool for RFID

"RFID IPR" is a blog site for patent information pool for RFID and related AutoID (Biometrics, NFC etc.) IPR: http://techipm-rfidipr.blogspot.com/

Each patent is linked to Google patent search for easy view and download. The site also provides information about RFID related standard, patent landscape, patent pool, and essential patent analysis.

©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

RFID Patent Landscape for Market Leader: Intermec vs. Motorola

Research for RFID patents issued by USPTO before January 1, 2009 shows that Motorola, merged with Symbol appeared to be a strong contender in RFID market leader competitions.

In case of top assignee analysis shows that Micron Technology including Micron Communications is a leader in the RFID technology innovations followed by Intermec, IBM and Motorola.

A patent portfolio analysis of Intermec and Motorola shows that Intermec and Motorola have very similar portfolios. Detailed comparison shows that Intermec has relative competitive advantage in tag antenna and tag packing and Motorola has relative competitive advantage in reader design and tracking application solution.


©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

RFID in Health Care Patent Landscape 1Q 2009

RFID in health care applications in the utility patents issued in the United States before January 1, 2009 was researched. In the analysis, conventional applications such as medical document management and patient tracking and monitoring were not included: considered applications are medical devices such as surgical machine, implantable medical device, orthopedic component and pharmaceutical applications such as drug delivery management system.

Analysis for top 10 assignees shows that IBM and Safety Syringes are the leader followed by GE Medical Systems.


©2009 TechIPm, LLC All RightsReserved

http://www.techipm.com/

RFID Patent IPR Research Report Sample Download

RFID Innovation Frontline is a research report on the technology innovations landscape for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). RFID Innovation Frontline utilizes patent information to assess the state of the art for technology innovations in RFID.

RFID Innovation Frontline 2009 1Q analyzes the utility patents issued in the United States (US) before January 1, 2009. Since the patent information is changed over time, this report only reflects the technology innovations landscape up to the time the analysis is conducted.

RFID Innovation Frontline is based on the statistical and analytical methods for mining patent information.

Research for RFID Innovation Frontline is done by experts both in intellectual property (IP) and technology subject matter.

RFID Innovation Frontline can be used by customers for:
•Trend analysis for RFID technology/product/market forecasting
•Planning RFID technology/business strategy
•Competitive Intelligence for RFID industry
•IP strategy for RFID R&D
•Opportunity analysis for RFID technology licensing

Contents
1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction
2.1 What is RFID Innovation Frontline?
2.2 What’s in RFID Innovation Frontline?
2.3 Mining Process for RFID Innovation Frontline

3. IF Statistics
3.1 Number of Patents by Year
3.2 Number of Patents by Assignee
3.3 Number of Patents by Assignee’s Nationality
3.4 Number of Patents by UPC
3.5 Number of Patents by US Family
3.6 Number of Patents by International Family
3.7 Number of Patents by Forward Citation

4. IF Analytics
4.1 Customized Classifications Used in RFID Innovation Frontline
4.2 Cites per Patent
4.3 Patent Impact Index
4.4 Patent Family Size
4.5 PFS vs. CPP Matrix
4.6 Technology Development Snapshot for UHF Tag Antenna

5. IF Enterprise
5.1 Number of Patents by Assignees for Customized Classifications
5.2 Patent Portfolio by Assignee
5.3 Activity Index for Intermec’s RFID Patents
5.4 Citations Matrix for Intermec’s RFID Patents
5.5 Competitor Analysis: Intermec vs. Motorola

Sample Download Link: http://www.techipm.com/products.html


©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

RFID Patent Licensing Contenders

US patents for RFID issued before January 1, 2009 were researched for RFID essential patent candidates. Essential Patent for RFID is an issued patent such that one or more of its claims is necessarily infringed by a product designed to implement the relevant UHF RFID standards: the EPCglobal Air Interfaces Standards Gen1 and Gen2 and ISO/IEC 18000-Part 6 (including Amendment 1) and the communications and interface protocols and conformance specifications referred to in those documents.

In our research, the RFID protocols are mined: encoding/decoding of communication signal /data layout of tag memory, air interface protocol, anti-collision protocol, and modulation protocol.

Top 5 contenders in RFID essential patent licensing are Micron Technology, Intermec, Motorola, Impinj, and IBM.


©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

Global RFID Competitive Advantage from Patent Mining

A chart for PFS vs. CPP matrix obtained from patent data for a specific technology may be used to show a competitive advantage landscape in a global market place.

Here PFS (Patent Family Size) is the number of international families (foreign patent applications) for a specific technology sub-class divided by the total number patents for all classes and CPP (Cites per patent) is a mean value of citations received by a specific technology sub-class from subsequent patents.

A class with high value of PFS means that this technology sub-class may have be competitive in market share of emerging global market compare to other technology sub-classes.

High CPP value is often associated with important innovations, which are key to future development in technology innovations.

Thus a specific technology sub-class located in the upper right corner of the matrix chart (high value both in PFS and CPP) may can have competitive advantage compare to other classes in developing a successful market globally.

Research for the US RFID patent issued before January 1, 2009 shows that tag antenna, tag architecture, and reader protocol are the RFID technology areas that have a competitive advantage with the further development of international IPR.


©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

Market Intelligence from Patent Information: RFID Case Study

Can we have a market intelligence for a specific technology field from patent information?
It is usually assume that the patent information only provide technology intelligence.
There are, however, no such restrictions in patent information. We can extract any business and technology intelligence from patent information depending on how we mine the patent information: nearly all patented inventions and innovations are, if not all, motivated initially by some business outcomes.

As a case study, we analyzed the RFID application patents.

As of Feb. 1, 2009, US issued patents analysis for RFID application market shows that the asset management market is the most active field of application technology innovations followed by security, retail, and healthcare etc.

©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

RFID Patent Analysis References

2009

RFID Innovation Frontline

by TechIPm, LLC (http://www.techipm.com/)

RFID Innovation Frontline 2009 1Q analyzes the utility patents issued in the United States (US) before January 1, 2009. Since the patent information are changed over time, this report only reflects the technology innovations landscape up to the time the analysis is conducted.

Contents

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

2.1 What is RFID Innovation Frontline?

2.2 What’s in RFID Innovation Frontline?

2.3 Mining Process for RFID Innovation Frontline

3. IF Statistics

3.1 Number of Patents by Year

3.2 Number of Patents by Assignee

3.3 Number of Patents by Assignee’s Nationality

3.4 Number of Patents by UPC

3.5 Number of Patents by US Family

3.6 Number of Patents by International Family

3.7 Number of Patents by Forward Citation

4. IF Analytics

4.1 Customized Classifications Used in RFID Innovation Frontline

4.2 Cites per Patent

4.3 Patent Impact Index

4.4 Patent Family Size

4.5 PFS vs. CPP Matrix

4.6 Technology Development Snapshot for UHF Tag Antenna

5. IF Enterprise

5.1 Number of Patents by Assignees for Customized Classifications

5.2 Patent Portfolio by Assignee

5.3 Activity Index for Intermec’s RFID Patents

5.4 Citations Matrix for Intermec’s RFID Patents

5.5 Competitor Analysis: Intermec vs. Motorola

Eexcutive Summary Request: send a request to alexglee@techipm.com with the following information:
Name:

Company:

Title/Position:
Business E-mail:

2008
RFID Patent Documents Classifications and Patent FamilyManagement Using Decision Tree and Networks Analysis

by Chi-Hung Su, Chih-Ming Lou

in International Conference on Business and Information

RFID patent analysis can track how the patent strategy and RFID technology development of their competitors has varied over time and analysis the patent portfolio of potential acquisition targets. In this study, RFID patent analysis is conducted by using patent guider software and the RFID patent document issued in United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database. In addition, a decision tree classification is applied to classify the RFID patent documents and a network analysis is utilized to map the RFID patent family and patent cooperation treaty. The results show that the RFID technology lies in the technology development stage of the technology life cycle now. The companies "Micron Technology", "Intermec IP Corp.", "IBM Corporation", "Micron Communications, Inc." and "Symbol Technologies" are the key patentee of RFID patents. The RFID manufacturers or RFID end users need to make a good strategy to pay royalties to gain the authority of RFID patents from these critical companies. The results of this study show that an appropriate categorization for RFID patent documents can assist the RFID patent read and analysis. The analysis results of RFID patent family can be used to develop the RFID patent portfolios in future.

Download: academic-papers.org/ocs2/session/Papers/Poster/729.pdf

2006

RFID: Technology, Applications and Market Potential

by BCC research (http://www.bccresearch.com/)

Contents

Chapter- 8: PATENT ANALYSIS

PATENT STRATEGIES

PATENT POOL

PATENT STRATEGIES IN STANDARDS
Intermec vs. Matrics (Now Symbol)-6/7/2004
Symbol vs. Intermec-3/10/2005
Intermec vs. Symbol vs. Intermec - 9/8/2005
Alien vs. Intermec-6/1/2006

PATENT TABLES

2004

RFID Patent Update

by Sourland Mountain Associates LLC (http://www.sourland.com/)

Contents

RFID Patent Map

Numerical Patent Overview

RFID Patent Activity

RFID Patent Assignments

Qualitative Analysis

RFID Patent Classifications

Technical Quality Ratings

Patent Ownership

Download: www.rfidjournal.net/live05/IP/Room_miss_100pm_stewart.pdf

©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

Patent Citation Analysis Used in RFID Innovation Frontline: Intermec Case Study

A chart for Backward Citation vs. Forward Citation matrix may be used to show quality landscape for a company’s patent portfolios. A patent located in the upper left corner of the matrix chart (low value in backward citation and high value in forward citation) may play a very important role for the development of innovative technology in a specific technology field.

As of Dec. 31, 2008, a large number of Intermec’s RFID patents are located in high values in forward citation and low values in backward citation. This shows that Interme'c RFID patent portfolios consit of many high quality patents contribute significantly to the RFID technological innovations.


©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

Innovation Indicators Used in RFID Innovation Frontline

An innovation indicator is a quantitative measure for technological innovation.

1. CPP:

Cites per patent (CPP) is a mean value of citations received by a specific patent class from subsequent patents. High CPP value is often associated with important innovations,which are key to future development in technology innovations.

2. PII:

Patent Impact Index (PII) is the CPP for a specific patent class divided by the CPP for all classes. A class with PII higher than 1 means that this class consists of high qualitypatents for competitiveness in technology innovations compare to other classes.

3. PFS:

Patent Family Size (PFS) is the number of international families (foreign patentapplications) for a specific patent class divided by the total number patents for all classes. A class with high value of PFS means that this class may have be competitive in marketshare of emerging global market compare to other classes.

4. AI:

Activity Index (AI) is a measure of a company’s innovation activities in a specific technology field.

©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/

Patent Portfolio Analysis for RFID Innovation Frontline

A visualization of each assignee’s patent portfolios can give a competitive landscape for the RFID technology innovations.

Analysis for the top 10 assignees’ patent portfolios shows that Micron Technology and Intermec have a strong patent portfolio in tag and reader and IBM has a strong patent portfolio in application.

Analysis for the top 10 assignees’ patent portfolios by the customized RFID technology classifications shows that Micron Technology has a strong patent portfolio in tag IC/chip while Intermec has a strong patent portfolio in tag architecture.

©2009 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved
http://www.techipm.com/