Patent licensing: 5G & the Internet of Things

24.04.2017

The next telecommunications standard, 5G, and the nascent Internet of Things (IoT), promise a world of high-speed interconnectivity. We’re already accustomed to people talking to smart devices to ask them to play music, or to order a taxi or takeaway. The technology for truly smart homes and even smart cities is following closely (see here for examples of how the IoT is already being used).

Standardisation will be essential to maximising the benefits of both the IoT and 5G. After all, there’s no point in having a smart thermostat that can be adjusted remotely if you can’t connect to it whilst out of the house because your phone is made by a different manufacturer. Standardisation will ensure that 5G/IoT devices and systems can connect and work together.

There will be thousands of patents essential to the operation of the standards developed. As the IoT grows and 5G is rolled out, the issue of how these patents are licensed will become increasingly important. Standard essential patents (SEPs) have to be licensed on a FRAND basis, but determining a FRAND royalty rate is a challenging task.

The Commission’s Roadmap

Following two studies on SEPs published at the end of last year (see here), on 10 April 2017, the Commission released a Roadmap that sets out its plan to publish a ‘Communication on Standard Essential Patents for a European digitalised economy’ later this year, possibly as early as May or June. The Communication (which will not have the binding force of a Directive or Regulation) is intended to complement the Commission’s Digital Single Market project, and to help work towards the goal of having 5G rolled out across the EU by 2025.

The Roadmap identifies three main issues that the Commission will seek to address in its Communication to ensure a balanced, flexible framework for SEP licensing:

  • Opaque information about SEP exposure: the lack of effective tools for potential licensees too identify which patents they need to take licences for in order to implement relevant standardised technologies.
  • Unclear valuation of patented technologies: the difficulties in assessing the value of new technology (for both licensors and licensees), including the lack of any widely accepted methodology.
  • Risks of uncertainty in enforcement: the general framework provided by the CJEU in Huawei v ZTE is a starting point for agreeing a FRAND royalty rate, but it does not provide complete guidance. There are many technical issues that aren’t addressed, such as how portfolio licensing, related damages claims, and ADR mechanisms should be dealt with. (NB: some of these issues have been recently addressed in the UK case Unwired Planet v Huawei, see our initial thoughts on that case here.)

It is unclear if the Communication will address other issues with standardisation and SEP licensing, such as over-declaration, hold-up, hold-out, the appropriate royalty base (a particularly difficult challenge in the diverse world of the IoT) or whether a total aggregate royalty burden is appropriate.

Use-based licensing?

The Roadmap does not offer any specific details as to how the Commission intends to solve the issues it identifies. However, according to MLex (here – subscription required), an outline of the Commission’s Communication seen in February suggested that the Commission was considering a licensing model that would enable licensors to offer licensees different royalty rates depending on how the relevant technology is used. This could extend to allowing licensors to refuse to offer a licence if the final use of the technology cannot be identified and tracked.

This suggestion has caused concern amongst a number of companies. ACT | The App Association, an organisation sponsored by Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, PayPal & others which represents more than 5,000 small technology firms, has written to the Commission claiming that such a licensing model poses a substantial threat to innovation. It argues that in order for suppliers to obtain licences under this model, they might be required to monitor their customers’ business practices and potentially to charge different customers different prices depending on how they use the technology. It also claims that this model could appropriate the value created by new innovators. If a company succeeds in developing a new use for a particular sensor by incorporating it into a health app for example, it might find itself being charged higher royalties for this new use of the sensor.

We have reported before on how new licensing models may be required to make best use of the IoT. Qualcomm, Ericsson and Royal KPN (among others) have backed a new licensing platform called Avanci. This is designed to remove the need for lengthy bi-lateral licence negotiations by making flat rate FRAND licences available for particular patent portfolios. However, it is now over six months since Avanci launched and there have been no reports yet of it successfully concluding any licence agreements.

The proper royalty base for patent licences has been a controversial topic for a number of years now. There has been considerable debate over whether licences should be based upon the price of the smallest component in which the patent is implemented, or the final price of the end product. This issue has been addressed by the courts on occasion, particularly in the US (see our post on CSIRO v Cisco here for example).

The new Communication is intended to provide best practice guidance on SEP licensing. If the Commission does opt for a use-based licensing model, this would be a controversial choice. However, whatever the Commission decides, given the number of conflicting interests and amounts of money at state, it is unlikely to satisfy everyone.