Intel, Samsung, others form WiMax patent pool

The Open Patent Alliance will provide a competitive royalty structure by charging only for the features required to develop WiMax products and noted that the patent pool will incorporate a variety of royalty licensing solutions, including accounting for cross-licensing among individual members within the pool.

By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News -- Electronic News, 6/9/2008

Six of the wireless industry’s largest players today formed a WiMax patent pool that will jointly license IP (intellectual property) aiming to limit royalty payments and encourage widespread adoption of the broadband wireless technology.

Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel, Samsung Electronics, and Sprint have announced the Open Patent Alliance (OPA), which they claim will advance a competitive and open IP rights model to stimulate a larger WiMax industry that supports lower equipment and service costs globally.

“By facilitating an open intellectual property rights model, we expect the alliance to in turn create a more competitive, innovative and broader WiMax industry that ultimately benefits the consumer with more choice for WiMax technology and services,” said Sriram Viswanathan, Intel Capital VP and general manager of the Intel WiMax program office, in a statement. 

To do so, OPA will form a WiMax patent pool that it said will help participating companies obtain access to patent licenses from patent owners at a predictable cost. The patent pool will aggregate essential patent rights needed to implement the WiMax standard as defined by the WiMax Forum and the IEEE 802.16e standard, the group said. OPA further said that the approach will focus on providing a more competitive royalty structure by charging only for the features required to develop WiMax products and noted that the patent pool will incorporate a variety of royalty licensing solutions, including accounting for cross-licensing among individual members within the pool.

“We believe that this initiation can be a significant momentum to expand mobile WiMax services,” said Hwan Chung, senior VP of Samsung Telecommunications America, in the statement. “Thanks to a flexible and easily adoptable scheme for participants, we can accelerate the mobile WiMax deployment and marketing so that people can enjoy the benefits of fast, revolutionarily new, and more cost-effective data communications.”

The OPA will issue a call for WiMax essential patents for inclusion in its patent pool. An independent third-party reviewer will serve as the “patent referee” and will evaluate submitted patents to determine how essential they are to the WiMax standard and WiMax Forum profiles. While the OPA initially will focus its efforts on the WiMax standard, it said it may work with other industry groups in the future.

OPA said it expects to secure an additional six to nine investor companies to encompass the WiMax value-chain and a broad geographic representation. Geographicly, the current six members are headquartered in the United States (Intel, Cisco, Clearwire, Sprint), Europe (Alcatel-Lucent), and Asia-Pacific (Samsung). Company interest in the technology includes Intel calling 2008 "the year of WiMax" at its fall 2007 Intel Developer Forum. Clearwire and Sprint in May announced plans for the first nationwide WiMax network. And Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, and Samsung work on the WiMax equipment end.

Each investor company will have a seat on the OPA board of directors. A dedicated OPA staff has been planned to be directed by and accountable to the board, and the alliance will serve as the licensing agent for the WiMax patent pool, representing the licensors that agree to participate in the pool.

In addition to the formation of a WiMax patent pool, OPA said it will educate the WiMax ecosystem about and serve as a central resource for WiMax IP rights topics.