In the 5G era, patents are the core competitiveness. In the 5G era, patents are hard currency. Everyone knows that 5G is the communication standard for our mobile phones. It used to be 2G and 3G, but now we use 4G. Soon we will It’s time to enter 5G. Patents are intellectual property rights, which are property rights enjoyed due to intellectual activities, that is, research and development. Next, let me tell you why patents are so powerful in the 5G era? What exactly is the standard patent? What are the benefits of standard patents? Why are standard patents the lifeblood of communications companies? Patent Era In the 5G era, patents are the core competitiveness. 1. Patents and patent licensing fees. Patents are the top priority in the early deployment of 5G. International communications giants such as Ericsson, Qualcomm, Nokia, and ZTE have recently disclosed their patent work. It’s their patent licensing fee policy. Ericsson took the lead in launching the first shot of 5G patent charging, followed closely by Qualcomm. Nokia, an established company, is not far behind and has also announced its 5G patent licensing fees. Who is this charged for? Of course, it is a domestic mobile phone manufacturer. Strictly speaking, it is a terminal sales company. What is the basis? It is the large number of standard patents held by these companies. In a word, these terminal companies use their patented technologies when producing mobile phones. Some people say that if you use someone else’s patented technology, do you have to pay a license fee? The answer is, absolutely. This is an internationally accepted rule and a legal requirement in our country. Interested students should try to figure it out. So, we are curious, how much patent license fee does a mobile phone have to pay? Let’s take 5G as an example. Nokia announced that the patent license fee for each unit will not exceed 3 euros, which is about 24 yuan; Qualcomm’s patent license fee is between 68 yuan and 97 yuan, and Ericsson’s patent license fee is between 24 yuan and 35 yuan. Well, China's Huawei is said to be very powerful. How much does it charge? I'm sorry, he hasn't said it yet, but he has stated that his position can be lower, and he requires everyone to lower it. 2. The Past and Present Life of Communication Standard Patents Let me understand what a standard patent is? The first is patents. According to internationally accepted practices, each country must enact a "Patent Law" to grant patent rights to the results of intellectual labor. In other words, if a new technology is developed, it can obtain a patent as long as it meets the requirements of the law. Patents include product patents and method patents according to their authorized subjects. Obviously, 5G has many innovations and advantages over 4G, such as wider bandwidth and faster speed. It must contain many new technologies, and these new technologies are often patented by these inventors. Secondly, there are technical standards. Technical standards are the best order achieved by certain industries and technologies in a certain period of time. There are mandatory standards and recommended standards. In the actual industry, there are also very strong mainstream standards and general standards. In terms of the subject of formulation, there are standards formulated by the state called national standards, and standards formulated by alliances called alliance standards. The framers and participants are often the people who know the most about the situation in this field. These participants put forward proposals as required, and then other members put forward their opinions and vote to confirm. If proposals with the same theme and the same function are encountered, they need to compete and then be voted on by the competent authority. This is like choosing a monitor. Obviously, these technical proposals may include patented technologies of each company, and of course may also include patents of other companies. So, you have to ask, does every proposal provider hope to include its patents in the standard? In order to limit the abuse of standard participants, a condition is set, called the standard necessity condition. In other words, patented technology must meet one condition to be included in the standard, that is, it is indispensable. In other words, without this patented technology, the standard will not be complete or simply cannot be implemented. In a word, this standard must have your patented technology, otherwise the standard will not be established. Therefore, the full name of standard patent is standard essential patent. At this point, you can see that it is not an easy task to develop a standard patent in 5G. After clarifying the standard essential patents, let’s take a look at the patents of the old giant Nokia. In April 2014, Nokia sold its mobile phone business to Microsoft and officially withdrew from the mobile phone market. Even so, Nokia can still earn a lot of patent fees. What's the secret? Quite simply, he also holds a large number of essential patents for 3G and 4G communication standards (hereinafter referred to as standard patents). These patents are still valid and can still be used to obtain licensing income.
According to statistics, Nokia holds 12,000 communications patents, of which 1/3 are GSM standard (2G) patents, 1/4 are W-CDMA standard (3G) patents, and about 1/5 are LTE standard (4G) patents. The "Patent Law" stipulates that the term of invention patent rights is 20 years. Nokia's research and development of 3G technology was around 2000. Most of these 3G standard patents are still valid. When other companies provide related services to users, they must theoretically Pay corresponding patent fees to Nokia. And that's exactly what happened. Currently, nearly 40 companies including smartphone manufacturers Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, HTC, and LG pay high patent licensing fees to Nokia every year. Nokia has also become an industry model in terms of patent protection and monetization. In May 2017, Nokia sued Apple for infringement of 32 of its patents. Apple lost the lawsuit and paid Nokia US$2 billion in compensation. In December of the same year, Nokia won another lawsuit, defeating the established communications company BlackBerry. and charged it US$137 million in patent fees. In addition, due to the continuous development of communication technology, the new generation of communication technology will generally be compatible with some of the previous generation technologies. Although Nokia is no longer directly engaged in mobile phone manufacturing, relying on its previous technical foundation, it can still develop communications technology and may also develop some new 5G patents. Even in the 5G era, many communication technology companies in the 3G and 4G era can still maintain their advantages. Obviously, if Nokia can do this, other giants will not be idle either. 3. Communication companies compete for 5G patents. In June 2018, the international standards-setting organization officially approved the 5G independent networking standard, which means that 5G has completed the first phase of standardization work. According to recent search results, as of June 14, 2018, the number of 5G standard patent families declared by 10 companies including Huawei, Ericsson, Samsung, Sharp, and Intel reached 5,401 families. In the field of 5G terminals, the total number of declared standard patents is as high as 5,124. my country's Huawei ranks first with 1481 people, accounting for 28.9%; Sweden's Ericsson is followed by 1134 people, accounting for 22.1%; South Korea's Samsung Group has 1038 people, accounting for 20.3%. Take the 5G standard channel technology as an example. It consists of a control channel and a data channel. The control channel mainly transmits instructions and synchronization data parameters, etc., and the data channel mainly transmits data. After multiple rounds of voting by 40 communications companies that participated in the standard formulation, the standards-setting organization 3GPP finally ruled that Huawei’s polar code technology (Polar) and Qualcomm’s low-density parity check code technology (LDPC) are the control channel technology and data channel technology respectively. 5G standard. It is reported that as of July 27, 2018, there are 103 patent families in the field of Polar code technology. Huawei occupies half of the country, with 51 patent families, accounting for 49.5%; Ericsson ranks second, with 26 patent families, accounting for 49.5% of the total. 25.2%, and InterDigital ranked third with Group 7 accounting for 6.8%.