WiMAX vendors push pooled patent plan

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 23 June 2009 05:25

Business IT - Technology

The Open Patent Alliance (OPA)- set up a year ago to promote mobile WiMAX technology through a pooling of key patents - has issued a call for patents and has selected Via Licensing Corporation to facilitate the formation and administration of the pool on its behalf.

The OPA was formed in June 2008 with this express purpose by http://www.itwire.com/content/view/18679/127/ Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel, Samsung Electronics and Sprint each of which agreed to pool its intellectual property in mobile WiMAX (IEEE802.16e) technology in a bid to boost uptake. Since then they have been joined by Huawei and Alvarion (February 2009), Acer (May 2009) and by Beceem Communications, GCT Semiconductor, Sequans Communications and UQ Communications (June 2009).

However Ericsson and Qualcomm were flagged at the OPA's formation as possibly holding IPR key to the success of mobile WiMAX and have still not joined (Qualcomm bought Flarion a pioneer in the OFDM technology at the core of mobile WiMAX).

Announcing its plans for the patent pool the OPA said: "A WiMAX patent pool can enable companies of all sizes to access needed patent licenses in a simple and cost-effective manner. Establishing this pool is an important part of the OPA's plans to create a fair and transparent IPR licensing structure with reasonable royalty rates.

"By lowering the barriers to entry for companies wishing to develop innovative products & services, the patent pool will accelerate the global adoption of WiMAX, simultaneously driving innovation, fostering broader choice and lowering costs for WiMAX technology, devices and applications."

Via Licensing Corporation will act as an independent third-party reviewer and will evaluate submitted patents to determine whether they are essential.

OPA president, Yung Hahn, said: "Today's patent call is a major milestone in our quest to create an innovative and truly open WiMAX ecosystem. Through the patent pool approach, not only will the OPA be able to drive down the costs of adopting WiMAX, we will be able to create a more predictable cost structure that can be accessed by infrastructure vendors, device manufacturers and application developers worldwide."

At its formation, the OPA said that establishment of the patent pool was its key goal, and no explanation has been offered as to why it has taken 12 months to even initiate this - 12 months in which there has been very rapid progress in 3GPP's Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, widely seen as a rival to mobile WiMAX.

The OPA also has its eyes on technologies other than mobile WiMAX saying: "While the OPA will initially focus its efforts on the WiMAX standard, it may work with other industry groups in the future."