Potential Patent Litigation Risk Assessment for the IoT (Internet of things) Wireless Connectivity Standards

Many market researchers expect that the interconnected IoT devices will create a new market that will result in more than $1 trillion in value added to the global economy within 10 years. Wireless connectivity is the key enabler for the mass deployment of the IoT devices. To assess the potential patent litigation risk for the IoT wireless connectivity, patents that are related to the key wireless standards for the IoT connectivity (LTE, Wireless LAN, Zigbee, Bluetooth, NFC, UHF RFID) are analyzed to evaluate the technology innovation leadership. More than 10,000 issued patents in the US as of May 15, 2015 are reviewed.  Patent disclosures in claims and detail description for each patent are analyzed as to whether the contents are within the scope of key technologies for the relevant standard specifications (3GPP, IEEE, ISO, NFC Forum, Bluetooth SIG). For details about the analysis, please refer “Wireless Patents for Standards & Applications 1Q 2015” (http://www.slideshare.net/alexglee/wireless-patents-for-standards-applications-1q-2015).

More than 3,000 patents hold by more than 160 assignees are identified as the key wireless standard patents for the IoT connectivity. To assess the potential patent litigation risk, the identified wireless standard patents for the IoT connectivity are further analyzed to figure out the patents that might be exploited for litigation: Patents owned by a NPE (NPE Passive) that may be transferred to other entities that might exploit them for litigation; Patents owned by a NPE (NPE Active) will enforce them; Patents owned by a NPE (NPE PAE) will enforce them for monetization purpose; Patents owned by a PE (Privateer) that may be transferred to other entities that will enforce them for monetization purpose; and Patents owned by a PE that are transferred to other entities for the unknown purpose (Suspected Assignment). 

More than 700 patents hold by more than 30 assignees are identified as the patents that might be exploited for litigation. PE PAEs, NPE PAEs, Privateers, NPE Actives, NPE Passives hold 44%, 31%, 9%,  8% and 7% of the total patents with the potential litigation risk respectively. The IPR share of patents for the Suspected Assignment is 1%.

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

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IoT (Internet of things) Wireless Connectivity Standards Innovation Leadership

As the number of granted patent is a good measure of innovation activities, issued US patents that are related to the key wireless standards for the IoT connectivity (LTE, Wireless LAN, Zigbee, Bluetooth, NFC, UHF RFID) are analyzed to evaluate the technology innovation leadership. More than 10,000 issued patents as of May 15, 2015 are reviewed.  Patent disclosures in claims and detail description for each patent are analyzed as to whether the contents are within the scope of key technologies for the relevant standard specifications (3GPP, IEEE, ISO, NFC Forum, Bluetooth SIG). For details about the analysis, please refer “Wireless Patents for Standards & Applications 1Q 2015” (http://www.slideshare.net/alexglee/wireless-patents-for-standards-applications-1q-2015).

More than 3,000 patents hold by more than 160 assignees are identified as the key wireless standard patents for the IoT connectivity. Samsung Electronics is the leader followed by LG Electronics, Qualcomm, Nokia, Google, Ericsson, Intel, Apple, InterDigital, Sony, Broadcom, BlackBerry, Texas Instruments, Marvell, Panasonic, ETRI, NEC and Cisco.

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

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WPAN (Bluetooth & Zigbee) Patents for Standard Ranking

As the number of patent applications is a good measure of innovation activities, to evaluate the WPAN (Bluetooth including Bluetooth LE and Zigbee) technology innovation activities, more than 2000 issued patents in the USPTO obtained from the carefully constructed keyword search are reviewed.  Patent disclosures in claims and detail description for each patent are analyzed as to whether the contents are within the scope of key technologies (e.g. modulation & coding, PHY & MAC frames & functions, Link Management etc.) for the IEEE 802.15.1, IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth Core 2 – 4 standard specifications.

More than 290 issued patents are identified as the key patents for the IEEE 802.15.1,  IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth Core 2 – 4 standard specifications as of 1Q 2015. Among 82 IPR holders, Broadcom is the leader followed by Samsung Electronics, Nokia, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Philips, Ericsson, Intel, BlackBerry, ETRI and Sony.

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

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Strategic Patent Management & Monetization 1Q 2015

Contents:

1. Integrated Strategic Patent Management

2. Nest Labs’ Integrated Strategic Patent Management 

3. Patent Citations as an Indicator of M&A Feasibility

4. Apple’s Strategic Alignment in Patent and M&A

5. Alcatel-Lucent acquisition by Nokia would provide leadership in Mobile based IoT innovation

6. Key wireless charging patents behind Samsung Galaxy S6: Open Innovation

7. Internet of Things (IoT) Intellectual Property (Patent) Information as of 1Q 2015 

8. Convida Wireless: Best Practice of Strategic Alliances between NPE and PE for IoT Innovation

9. Investment for Patent Monetization

10. Reinventing of Patent Monetization Model

11. The Monetizing Patent’s DNA: How to identify and develop the monetizing patents

12. Increasing Monetization Activities Exploiting LTE Patents

13. How much will Apple need to pay to Ericsson for a reasonable licensing royalty of 4G LTE patents?

14. Increasing IP Financing Activities Exploiting Wireless Patents

15. Current Status of Patent Rights: U.S. v. Other Countries

16. Smartphone Patent Wars: Legal & Policy Issues of Standard Essential Patents in the ICT Industry

17. Wireless Patents under the PTAB’s IPR & CBM Scrutiny

18. The U.S. Holds IPR Leadership in Patents for Wireless Standards

19. Wireless Patents for Standards & Applications Database 

20. IoT (Internet of Things) Intellectual Property (Patent) Strategy Consulting Services

21. Developing New Commercialization Opportunities for Existing Patents Exploiting Emerging IoT Platforms

Link: http://www.slideshare.net/alexglee/strategic-patent-management-monetization-1q-2015

Developing New Commercialization Opportunities for Existing Patents Exploiting Emerging IoT Platforms

HBS Professor Iansiti, the author of “The Keystone Advantage,” suggested technological assimilation as a new engine for technological innovations in his article “Creative Construction.”  In the technological assimilation frameworks, a core innovation that once provided stand-alone products or services for a specific market can be the building blocks for mass market generating innovations through assimilation to broader platforms that were not existed at the time of innovations. A good example may be the GPS technology providing LBS (location based services) applications for smartphones and automobiles. Another good example may be the DVR technology of TiVo that was integrated into digital set-top box platforms.

Recently, several global leaders in IoT (Internet of Things) business provide the IoT platforms to create diverse platform-based business models:

• Samsung’s Artik platform can help developers create new sensor-enabled devices. Artik platform includes a family of processors and wireless connectivity that can power and connect everything such as servers, smartphones and wearables (https://www.artik.io/).

• Apple’s HomeKit home automation platform can help developers create new securely connected home automation devices in iOS.  HomeKit enables users to discover HomeKit accessories in their home and configure them, or create actions to control the devices (https://developer.apple.com/homekit/).

• Google will unveil IoT platform in May. The platform will help developers create connected home environment (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Googles-IoT-platform-to-launch-this-month/articleshow/47115137.cms).

• MediaTek’s LinkIT One platform provides module-based reference design and feature rich capabilities to software development, prototyping and final hardware design of Wearables and IoT devices (http://labs.mediatek.com/site/global/home/p_home.gsp).

The IoT platforms can also be used as the platform-based commercialization for the existing patented technologies. The integration feasibility of the existing patented technologies into the IoT platforms can be found by contrasting all possible business models from the IoT platforms to the potential value propositions provided by the inventive departures (novelty points) of the existing patents (please refer http://techipm-innovationfrontline.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-monetizing-patents-dna-how-to.html for the “Monetizing Patent’s DNATM” methodology).


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

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The U.S. Holds IPR Leadership in Patents for Wireless Standards

To evaluate the IPR leadership in wireless communications, the US patents that are related to the key wireless standards are analyzed.  The wireless patens are grouped by mobile wireless communications (4G LTE) related patents and fixed wireless communications (WLAN, WPAN, NFC) related patents.  Patent disclosures in claims and detail description for each patent are analyzed as to whether the contents are within the scope of key standard specifications (3GPP, IEEE, ISO, NFC Forum).  Top 20 patent holders for each group are then selected to rank the combined IPR shares.  For details about the analysis, please refer “Wireless Patents for Standards & Applications 1Q 2015” (http://www.slideshare.net/alexglee/wireless-patents-for-standards-applications-1q-2015).

For the mobile wireless communications IPR, LG Electronics is the leader followed by Samsung Electronics, Qualcomm, Google, Ericsson, Nokia, Apple, InterDigital, BlackBerry and Panasonic. For the fixed wireless communications IPR, Sony is the leader followed by Intel, Marvell, Samsung Electronics, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Cisco, NXP, Philips and Texas Instruments. Combining the mobile and fixed wireless communications IPR, Samsung Electronics is the leader followed by LG Electronics, Qualcomm, Intel, Sony, Nokia, Google, Ericsson, Marvell and InterDigital.

The combined IPR shares for the top 20 IPR holder’s countries based on the location of headquarter show that the U.S. holds IPR leadership in patents for the key wireless standards.

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

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Convida Wireless: Best Practice of Strategic Alliances between NPE and PE for IoT Innovation

Convida Wireless is a joint venture between InterDigital and Sony America formed in 2013 for driving new IoT innovation in the field of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and other connectivity technologies. It is a good example of strategic alliances between NPE and PE to combine Sony's consumer electronics production expertise with InterDigital's pioneering wireless research for IPR generation.

Recent patent research for the M2M communication technologies (ref. http://techipm-innovationfrontline.blogspot.com/2015/03/m2m-d2d-communications-for-iot.html) showed that Convida Wireless ranked 14th in number of patent applications among 58 IPR holders. Convida Wireless’ patents cover M2M/IoT systems that include devices such as sensors, gateways to other networks and back-end servers. Convida Wireless’ patents also cover M2M/IoT systems’ performances such as devices management, data collection from the devices, data storage and data processing and data querying from users or applications.

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

©2015 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved

http://www.techipm.com/