OK, but what is "SEP"?
“OK, but what is “SEP”? “
Just looked it up “System Enabling Patent!”
RE: OK, but what is “SEP”?
“SEP” — Standard-Essential Patent
SEPs play an important role in standardisation, as they provide incentives for companies to develop technologies for standards and to contribute to standardisation, which involves costly private investment for public benefit. Further, patent holders will have an interest in improving existing standards if they can recoup the costs through SEP royalty fees; successful 3G and 4G licensing programmes have proven that SEP royalties are highly lucrative. Moreover, various SEP-related litigation cases indicate that SEP ownership controls how mobile technologies are used.
In recent years, the number of 5G-related SEPs has increased sharply. However, only a few companies have declared that they own such patents and Nokia and ZTE are among those which are yet to do so.
|
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.