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June 10, 2008

Some WiMAX technology partners are announcing a patent-sharing plan to help encourage fair competition.

Partners also want to avoid any intellectual property issues that could impede the young wireless broadband technology’s growth potential.

The Open Patent Alliance now includes Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel, Samsung Electronics and Sprint.

Officials said that more companies are also expected to join soon. Notably absent for now are Motorola, Nokia and Qualcomm, along with a variety of smaller components makers and wireless carriers.

Also missing from the announcement are Clearwire’s major investors – Bright House Networks, Comcast, Google and now Time Warner Cable.

The partners involved said that "for the future of Wi-MAX technology, the patent pool will incorporate a variety of royalty licensing solutions, including accounting for cross-licensing among individual members within the pool and will educate the WiMAX ecosystem about and serve as a central resource for WiMAX intellectual property rights topics.”

The announcement doesn't explain the fate of any important patents which member companies choose not to share.

Overall, member companies have that right. However, it would mean having to negotiate separate terms with each licensee and would probably upset the other members.

The organization will hire the necessary staff and will also appoint an independent reviewer to evaluate each patent’s essential nature.

Alliance members said their companies may consider working with other, unspecified organizations in the future, which likely means the WiMAX Forum and possibly the similar LTE patent-sharing group announced in April – the technologies are fundamentally similar, industry experts say.

As a direct result, there could be some room for potentially overlapping patent claims in the WiMAX segment of the industry.

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Source: GCIS.