3G LTE IPR plan

3G LTE IPR plan

We can make mistakes, but not twice. It is in short what ETSI is thinking about Intellectual Property Rights for patents essential to mobile networks. WCDMA cumulative royalties currently are about $80-$100bn up to 2017. ETSI wants to avoid to duplicate 3G IPR situation, and escalation of costs of buying and licensing WCDMA technology. The new approach for LTE is considering an ex ante approach to declaring relevant patents (for avoiding future new royalty claims) and an agreement by all relevant patent-holders on a pre-agreed cumulative cap of approximately 5% for royalties on the cost of all LTE equipment. Time is urging, because LTE draft specs should be frozen in June this year, inside Release 7 of the 3GPP standard, including OFDM and MIMO, but excluding CDMA, and by the same way Qualcomm, main opponent to royalty capping. The main benefit of this approach is to clearly define future cost structure and limit the impact of licensing costs.