The NGMN Board welcomes the launch of the LTE Patent Pool managed by VIA Licensing and combining the patent portfolios of 10 companies.
The NGMN Board has consistently stated that patents are an important part of standardised technologies like GSM, UMTS and LTE. The NGMN Alliance published the first requirements for a successful LTE patent pool in 2010 and its board has been a supporter of the development and use of patent pools as a means to improve transparency and predictability of royalty rates since that time. It is important to note that six of the patent pool’s members are NGMN partners (AT&T, NTT DOCOMO, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, SK Telecom and ZTE) who have also been active in supporting the NGMN activities on patent pools in the past. The NGMN Board is convinced that the establishment of a well-balanced LTE patent pool will be able to embrace the complexity of LTE technology and LTE patents and, in addition to bilateral licensing, will therefore constitute an opportunity for many companies to offer their essential patents in a simple and clear manner, and will support the fast uptake of LTE.
The operators and manufacturers combining their efforts in the establishment of an LTE Patent Pool have taken a very significant and material step towards providing a transparent and predictable IPR infrastructure to support the growth and overall success of LTE,“ said Sandro Dionisi, Chairman of the NGMN Board. He continued: ”LTE as a technology is progressing fast and the deployment of networks based on this technology is rapidly taking place in many regions of the world. The NGMN Alliance is happy to see that the requirements of the mobile industry are being successfully adopted also in the area of Intellectual Property.”