MPEG LA eyes up LTE patents

Patent pool expert MPEG LA says it is making significant progress working with a group of interested companies to create a joint patent pool license for the Long Term Evolution (LTE) Standard for mobile telecommunications. It is calling for interested parties, both with patents and patent applications, to be part of the pool.
MPEG LA’s efforts, started last year, have been directed toward educating the market about the benefits of a pool license to address the patent thicket around this next generation wireless technology and assist the market with its adoption. A fight or uncertainty over the patent situation would dramatically slow the adoption of the the technology, as happened with high definition video and the AVC patents.
“The market is ready, and we are proud that industry leading companies have invited us to facilitate creation of an LTE pool license,” said MPEG LA President and CEO Larry Horn.

“Given the history of telecommunications patent pools, MPEG LA has taken the time to consult directly with mobile network operators, network equipment manufacturers and mobile handset companies regarding the benefits of a patent pool for LTE, and they have encouraged MPEG LA to move forward with this effort. Next generation wireless technology, with its multifunctional capabilities, begs for a patent pool licensing alternative to make its full potential available to consumers worldwide, and MPEG LA’s success in creating large pool licenses uniquely positions us to achieve it.”

MPEG LA would like as many essential patent holders as possible to be included in this process. Therefore, MPEG LA invites any party that believes it has patents that are essential to the LTE Standard to submit them by June 19, 2009 for evaluation of their essentiality by MPEG LA’s patent evaluators in order to participate in the creation of a joint LTE patent license.
Although only issued patents will be included in the license, in order to participate in the license development process, patent applications with claims that their owners believe are essential to the LTE Standard and likely to issue in a patent also may be submitted.
A key point is that, although the process will begin with LTE, it may be expanded at a later stage to provide coverage for backward compatibility with other mobile
telecommunications technologies.
http://www.mpegla.com/pid/lte.