WiMAX World: Resnick reveals IPR findings

BOSTON--WiMAX Forum President Ron Resnick, in a Thursday morning keynote at WiMAX World here, said a study the WiMAX Forum commissioned to determine how the intellectual property rights for WiMAX technology were distributed throughout the industry found that no single company is in a dominant patent ownership position.

That’s good news for the forum’s constituents, and especially for small companies that have been growing increasingly concerned that larger firms and IPR specialists like Qualcomm might forge a dominant IPR position that forces the entire industry to pay them potentially expensive royalties.

The forum’s study was conducted by IPR law firm Schwegman, Lundberg, Woessner and Kluth, and found that there are about 1550 WiMAX-related patents whose ownership is distributed among about 330 companies. Samsung owns close to 20% of those patents, but no other company has a larger percentage than that. Also, of the 23 companies that own more than 10 patents, 74% are WiMAX Forum members.

“There is a dispersed distribution of patents,” Resnick said. “We are promoting the practice of charging very low royalties for WiMAX, unlike what has happened with some 3G technologies. What this shows is that the WiMAX market will be a safe haven for royalties in the future.”