FEATURED ARTICLES BY KEITH MALLINSON

11/22/2022· Telecommunication

Revenue Boost For Automotive Industry From Cellular Connectivity Outweighs SEP Licensing Costs

By: Keith Mallinson

The automotive industry is being revolutionized by continuous cloud connectivity, autonomous driving technologies, drive train electrification and shared mobility. These transformations are being facilitated in part by the standardized cellular technologies now commonly implemented in “connected vehicles” or “CVs”.

6/20/2022· Telecommunication

Spectrum Auctions: Okay For Some, But Not For Others (Analyst Angle)

By: Keith Mallinson

A recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Paul Wolfowitz, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense and former President of the World Bank, controversially suggests that auctioning spectrum for 5G is detrimental to the U.S. and helps Huawei. While spectrum allocation is an important issue in industrial and economic policy, high auction fees do not appear to have impaired U.S. development and deployment of 4G or 5G.

3/22/2022· Telecommunication

Global Standard Setting At 3GPP Endangered With Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine (Analyst Angle)

By: Keith Mallinson

It took the industry 30 years to consolidate mobile communications developments into a single 4G standard with the introduction of LTE and the demise of WiMAX. That attainment—also in 5G—should be cherished; but it is imperiled by geopolitical developments.

12/3/2021· Telecommunication

Modest SEP Royalties On Smartphones Have Declined And Licensing Is Stabilizing

By: Keith Mallinson

Aggregate royalty payments for licensing cellular technology standard-essential patents (SEPs) in smartphones have remained in modest single-digit percentages and have declined since 2013. This defies purported concerns that the stacking of patent royalties paid to multiple licensors have led to or would lead to unreasonably high aggregate rates on mobile devices

7/5/2021· Automotive - Vehicular

Connected Cars: How C-V2X In 5G Will Transform Cars And Save Lives

By: Keith Mallinson

Technological improvements in cars over the decades have generally reduced costs or increased performance and safety. “Analog” technologies including collapsible steering columns, crumple zones and seatbelts have saved car occupants from death or serious injury. Many digital technologies have also improved our in-car experience with entertainment, mobile communications

5/3/2021· Intellectual Property

One-Stop-Shopping With Segmented Offerings Is Most Appealing For SEP Licensing In IoT Including 5G

By: Keith Mallinson

Patent pooling is increasingly attractive for licensing cellular technologies with emerging IoT including 5G because it can provide greater transparency, predictability, and various efficiencies such as lower transaction costs at scale in standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing with multiple dimensions and complexities including

1/22/2021· Patents

Right-Pricing Cellular Patent Licensing in 4G and 5G Connected Vehicles

By: Keith Mallinson

While litigation is bogging down the licensing of cellular standard essential patents (SEPs) in vehicles with disputes about where in the production supply chain licensing may or must occur, this is also delaying payment of Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) royalty charges in these cases and causing confusion about licensing value.

11/17/2020· Intellectual Property

Valuing SEP portfolios And Determining FRAND rates: How, And Who Should "get it done"?

By: Keith Mallinson

While there is much uncertainty about the outlook for standard-essential patent royalty rates in court determinations, there are plenty of solid benchmarks in well-established comparable licenses (“comps”). The former rates are thin on the ground and have been made up based on some dubious and fiercely...

2/25/2019· Intellectual Property

Adjusting the Balance in SEP Evaluations and Licensing

By: Keith Mallinson

A European Commission DG Growth initiative described in its Roadmap on Standard Essential Patents for a European digitalised economy aims to increase information on SEPs so implementers can get a better idea about which of these they might be infringing. Additional disclosures on how patent claims might read on the standards could be beneficial. Requirements should reflect the dynamics and uncertainties in standards development and patent prosecution and must not be onerous to patent owners. These are issues for standards development organisations to consider.

1/24/2019· Telecommunication

Maintaining Cellular Growth Until Large-scale 5G IoT Adoption in the Mid 2020s

By: Keith Mallinson

The notion of "peak smartphone" is widely discussed of late, including by the Economist. Revenues are flattening with longer replacement cycles, saturating markets, resistance to Apple's price increases, decreasing prices among Android's fiercely competitive OEMs and allegedly diminishing technical improvements in successive new device models. 5G holds massive growth potential, but much of that is in industrial and IoT markets that will take at least several years to establish themselves and grow to levels that will have substantial impact on overall device and service revenues.