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Table 2: Estimated 5G patent portfolios

Applicant/assignee	5G SEP family share	Market coverage	Citation relevance
Qualcomm	8.6%	1.43	0.74
Huawei	7.92%	1.43	0.56
LG Electronics	7.38%	1.34	2.63
Ericsson	6.74%	1.23	0.66
Samsung	5.77%	1.31	0.95
ZTE	4.1%	1.45	0.62
Nokia	3.48%	1.23	1.43
Intel	3.04%	1.52	0.66
NTT DOCOMO	2.61%	1.46	0.93
Alcatel-Lucent (acquired by Nokia)	2.06%	1.28	1.57
NEC	1.91%	1.39	0.72
Sony Corporation	1.75%	1.47	1.39
ETRI	1.7%	0.98	0.79
Sharp	1.69%	1.43	0.9
Panasonic	1.47%	1.46	1.14
BlackBerry Limited	1.29%	1.21	1.37
Apple	1.12%	1.24	0.96
InterDigital	1.08%	1.61	2.43
MediaTek	0.79%	1.31	1.21
Motorola	0.71%	1.28	0.99

Table 2 lists the top 20 patent portfolio shares of 5G SEP owners, estimating that Qualcomm, Huawei, LG Electronics, Ericsson and Samsung own the largest 5G SEP portfolios. In comparison to the technical contribution and the meeting attendance data (see part one), companies such as Alcatel-Lucent, Sharp, Panasonic, BlackBerry, Apple and InterDigital appear in the top 20 patent owners, despite not being among the strongest standards contributors.

The market coverage indicator estimates the patent family size by counting each country of a patent family divided by the country’s gross domestic product. The count is normalised and compared to industry averages (using IPC or CPC, year and country). Table 2 shows that most 5G patent portfolios have extensive international coverage (a score higher than one is above average), with only ETRI showing a more localised portfolio.

The citation relevance indicator counts the normalised number of received patent citations (not counting self-citations). LG Electronics, InterDigital, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia scored highest, indicating that they own valuable patent portfolios.

The data provides a first glimpse of the 5G patent landscape. It will be exciting to monitor which company will become the strongest IP owner for 5G essential technologies over the coming years.