5G value to cars found to be less than $10

The June 2022 Brattle Group report calculates Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) royalty rates for wireless Standard-Essential Patents (SEPs) in vehicles for both 4G/LTE and 5G. 

Brattle found that wireless technology is increasingly expanding from handsets to the Internet of Things (IoT), including “connected vehicles.” LTE royalties for handsets (unlike those for vehicles) have been market and court tested, offering clarity around applicable FRAND rates for handsets. Rates for vehicles thus were calculated using LTE handset rates as a benchmark; adjusted for the differences in usage and capabilities. Brattle also found royalty rates for 5G as applied to vehicles to be the same as LTE because 5G rates have not been market or court tested and 5G currently offers no additional value to vehicles over LTE. While some 5G connected vehicle applications may create value in the future, that future is still uncertain and years away. Brattle notes that widespread adoption of 5G connected vehicle applications is necessary before any appreciable value can be attached to them.  

Brattle uses two distinct approaches to obtain an independent, FRAND rate. The first identified a vehicle’s Telematics Control Unit (TCU) as the key licensable component and calculated a FRAND rate of $6.57 per vehicle for a comparable TCU-capable handset, adjusted for the lower connectivity and usage requirements of vehicles.

The second approach uses the consumers’ relative willingness to pay for wireless connectivity in different applications as an indicator of the relative value of a 4G license in those applications, and found that consumers value connectivity in vehicles significantly less than in handsets. Using this approach, Brattle found the rate to be $7.76 per vehicle.

The full report and other 5G tools are available exclusively through Unified Patents.  In addition to economic reports, Unified provides Objective Patent Landscapes (OPAL) for many standards, including 5G and LTE, with the world’s largest human evaluated training set, Wi-Fi 6, HEVC, AVC, and others.  Unified’s standard submission database, OPEN, allows users to access all contributions to major standards such as 3GPP, MPEG, IEEE, and IETF.

Complete the form below to receive the full executive summary done by the Brattle Group and sponsored by Unified Patents.

VVC's Adoption Hampered by Patent Uncertainty and Low Value

Unified Consulting’s Craig Thompson has written an article covering the potential risks and uncertainty around the adoption of Versatile Video Coding (VVC). VVC is entering a competitive codec market where its future will depend more on royalty demands than on its technical specifications. As is detailed in an VVC economic report recently published by Unified Patents and authored by Charles River Associates, VVC is faced with strong competition from MPEG's new Essential Video Codec (EVC), and existing HEVC, AVC as well as from Alliance for Open Media's Advance Video 1 codec (AV1). The royalty pricing pressure on VVC is exerted, first, by MPEG-LA's AVC pool, which is viewed by courts in the United States and in Europe as being a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) rate, and, second, by AV1 and EVC, which have been developed specifically to incur less if any royalties.

Click HERE to read the rest of the article published by Streaming Media.

5G RAN Developments: A Look at Licensing Defenses

Changes in the 5G radio access network (RAN) – and in particular network disaggregation – could make the monetization of patents essential to RAN equipment and operations (5G RAN SEPs) more challenging. Some of the challenges arise from identifying directly liable infringers in a disaggregated, multi-component system.

“Non-practicing licensing entities should find [the 5G RAN] market attractive provided they are able to source quality patents focusing on discrete functions performed by single entities. Traditional RAN vendors with licensable portfolios are likely finding the new market disconcerting, leaving them with existential questions.”

This final part of the three-part series (read Part 1 and Part 2) addresses other challenges to the monetization of 5G RAN SEPs such as the implementation of parts of the 5G RAN using open source software, patent exhaustion, and vendor indemnifications.

Continue reading the full article on IPWatchdog’s website HERE. This article is the third part in a series written by Craig Thompson, General Manager and COO for Unified Consulting.

5G RAN SEPs Likely to Encourage a Frenzy of Activity

The rapidly changing 5G RAN and the growth forecasts for the equipment market promises to attract 5G RAN SEP monetization. The large number and diverse ownership of 5G RAN SEPs should encourage a frenzy of monetization activity.

As of January 2021, nearly 33,000 active patent families have been self-declared to 5G. Of those families, over 63% or 20,750 families have been self-declared specifically to 5G RAN infrastructure. These families comprise nearly 70,000 active patents and applications. The pie chart below developed from Unified Patents’ objective patent landscaping tool (OPAL) shows the top 20 ownership of those families.

Continue reading the full article on IPWatchdog’s website HERE. This article is the second part in a series written by Craig Thompson, General Manager and COO for Unified Consulting.