Huawei makes play for LTE patent leadership

Paul Rasmussen | September 08, 2009

FierceWireless: Europe

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Huawei has increased the pressure on its rivals by claiming to be leading the race for being granted LTE patents.

The company, which recently demonstrated the world's first LTE mobile broadband internet connection with TeliaSonera in Oslo, said that ETSI had confirmed the award of 147 LTE patents to the Chinese equipment manufacturer.

According to Huawei, it was granted patents across several key LTE sub-sectors, such as physical-layer air interface, radio resource management and connection management, and represented 12% of the total existing 1,272 LTE patents assigned by ETSI as of August 2009.

Yin Weimin, president of Huawei’s LTE division, said this reflected the company's commitment to operators as they evolve to LTE. “We have always adopted a forward-looking approach and will continue to collaborate closely with the industry in driving the development of next-generation mobile communication solutions.”

Separately, the patent portfolio management firm, Sisvel, has responded to a request from the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance to help select the patent pool administrator for parties owning patents essential to the LTE standard.

In May, Sisvel called upon the wireless industry for patents and patent applications essential to the LTE standard, in an effort to support the creation of a joint licensing program to make LTE technology accessible to all users on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms and conditions.

This move by the NGMN to establish an open and fair approach to LTE patents has perhaps been motivated by the many long and protracted legal battles that have been fought for years over wireless patent ownership and infringements.

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FierceWireless: Europe

Paul Rasmussen

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